The Only Real Pain A Heart Can Ever Know
by elfmaiden4legs
Summary: Set during Beckett and Castle's engagement. All seems to be going well for the couple until one day Castle wakes up not feeling well. Surely it's nothing more than just a simple cold? Non-threatening and ordinary? But when he begins to experience chest pains Beckett is forced to reconnect with a face from the past in order to get to the bottom of what is wrong and help him.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

Castle awoke with a start, looking past his fiancé to the clock on the bedside table – it was three o' clock. He leant back and sighed – he hated waking up prematurely, especially this time in the morning. He hardly seemed to get enough sleep as it was these days and once he was awake his mind would start racing almost immediately, making it almost impossible for him to get back to sleep.

He wondered what had woken him this time – a bad dream? No. He was sweating – the sheets on his side of the bed were wet with it – but his heart wasn't pounding.

A noise then? He listened – but there was no sound either inside the flat or coming from the road outside, save for Beckett's shallow breathing beside him.

A resolution to a new case perhaps? But they had tied up all the loose ends to their most recent assignment that very afternoon.

An idea for a new story? He asked himself – but his mind was blank.

Absolutely nothing at all then it seemed, which made it even more infuriating.

He took a breath in through his nose and let it out through his mouth slowly. He rolled over onto his side – his neck felt a little stiff. He reached up a cold and clammy palm to rub at it and his head started to throb. His stomach was churning – making him feel nauseas.

He swallowed hard as he felt the bile begin to rise, and – there it was – the gravelly sting at the back of his throat.

So it was sickness which had disturbed his rest.

The reason behind his recurrent sneezing fits that day had been down to more than just simple allergies then, it now seemed.

Castle shivered, pulling the sheets up around him and inevitably steeling a few inches from Beckett's side of the bed as he did so. He felt guilty – he didn't want her to get cold – but he couldn't ignore his own body's thirst for warmth. It was an instinctual need, and the sweat had already started to cool, leaving his share of the blankets cold and uncomfortable.

Besides, her skin felt dry and hot against his.

He lay there, listening to the sound of her breathing and feeling the congestion already beginning to settle on his lungs. He was finding it harder to breathe than he had done a few hours ago, but it was not enough to cause him any great concern.

It was only a cold.

He closed his eyes and it wasn't long before he felt himself freefalling – drifting back off towards a broken and fitful sleep.

He had no reason to worry – colds were ordinary. He'd had dozens throughout the course of his life so far, and no doubt there would be many more to come.

They certainly weren't dangerous.

At least that's what Castle thought.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

When Castle next awoke it was morning. The sun shining through the small gap in the curtains hurt his eyes and he reached up a hand to shield them.

As he did so someone stepped into the path of the offending beam of light, casting a shadow over him, and he slowly opened his eyes again. Beckett was looking down at him – a faint flicker of something akin to concern upon her face.

"Morning sweetheart." She smiled.

"Morning." He croaked. His sore throat had evidently progressed since the previous evening – it felt swollen, and there were now two large marbles on either side of his neck where his glands should have been. He grimaced.

"I've made breakfast if you want any?" She offered him.

"And why wouldn't I want any?" He asked her.

She looked him up and down critically and sighed – the corners of her lips curling in an incredulous but short lived laugh. She stroked a few stray strands of hair away from his face.

"Don't think I haven't noticed you're sick." She told him. "You don't have to hide it from me you know."

He looked up at her – at the beautiful, feisty, independent, intelligent, strong and generous woman he was in love with – and he knew that he couldn't lie to her.

He shook his head.

"Am I really that see through?" He asked her.

"No." She reassured him. "But you'd have to be blind and deaf not to have noticed it, and you are marrying a cop. I could hear the fluid bubbling on your lungs like a peculator as soon as I woke up."

Castle caught a whiff of strong coffee. It smelt close by, and as he looked around he noticed the tray of food perched on the edge of the bed. The sight of the warm banana and syrup squeezed over pancakes made his stomach turn, and he swallowed hard.

"You don't have to eat anything if you don't want to." She assured him.

His throat hurt too much for him to immediately respond but he looked up at her gratefully and seeing how uncomfortable the presence of the food seemed to be making him she covered it over and took it away, returning with a damp wash cloth in her hand.

Perching down beside him and placing her warm palm to his forehead she grimaced.

"You're burning up." She observed.

Despite the chill in his bones Castle leaned into the cold cloth as it was pressed against his forehead.

"What time is it?" He asked her.

"The clock is right beside you Rick." She chuckled at his apparent laziness as she pointed out its position, cupping his rosy cheeks in her hands.

"My neck's stiff. It hurts when I move." He explained, and as he spoke the air caught in his lungs. It made him cough – turning into a wet and chesty rattle. Beckett rubbed his back in a soothing circular motion. It was only when the fit had passed that she was finally able to answer his question.

"It's just gone nine-thirty." She told him once she'd established that he'd sufficiently recovered and was breathing normally again. He frowned – sitting up a little further in the bed.

"We're late for work!" He exclaimed – choking on his own words.

"Hey, easy there tiger." She immediately put a hand on his chest to try and steady him. He looked so pale, his skin the colour of recently turned milk. "We're not going to work today. I called in sick."

"Sick? You're not sick." His frown deepened.

"No, but you are," She explained. "and I would only have been worrying myself sick thinking about you all day if I hadn't."

He smiled.

"If you don't want any breakfast you should go back to sleep." She told him.

"Typical." He laughed. "The one and only time you decide to play hookie and I'm too sick to enjoy it.

"You need to rest." She told him.

He sighed.

"I'll be in the living room if you need anything." She said as she got to her feet, but as she turned to go he reached out to grab her – stopping her in her tracks. His skin had taken on a greenish-grey hew.

He looked at her apologetically, and licked his dry lips.

"I think I'm going to be sick." He gulped.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

Beckett watched her lover as he slept – he'd been asleep all day and she was beginning to worry. She'd once described Richard Castle as a nine year old on a sugar rush, and as much as she loved him she still couldn't think of a more fitting description for the man. It was unnerving, pottering about in a silent flat, knowing that the overgrown school boy who owned it was asleep, so still, upstairs.

This was the man who had once answered the door kitted out in a full laser suit and looking like New York's answer to Darth Vader.

Quiet was not normally a word one would associate with Richard Castle. If anything she'd expected him to act even more like a child now that he was sick, but she'd hardly heard a peep from him all day.

She'd popped her head around the door at various intervals to check on him, but apart from when she'd had to wake him to drink – worried that he would become dehydrated otherwise – he had slept through most of the morning and the entire afternoon.

He hadn't even got up to go to the toilet.

Apart from some Tylenol which she had found at the back of the medicine cabinet he had taken no other medication since that morning and at around four o' clock she decided that if he still wasn't feeling any better it might be time to try something stronger. An all in one cold remedy might have been more effective she considered, but she had not been able to find any in the flat – it would have therefore meant a trip to the drug store in order to buy some, and she hadn't wanted to leave him.

She had however come across a can of chicken-noodle soup whilst raiding the cupboards, and heated this up – hoping he would by now be feeling hungry, even if he still didn't feel up to eating much – and took it in with her when she next went to check on him, along with a large glass of water and, for lack of anything else to give him, a couple more of the tablets.

When she entered she was surprised to find him awake.

"Hey." She smiled – putting the tray down on the end of the bed as she made her way over to check on him. "How are you feeling?" She asked.

He made a motion with his hand as if to suggest not so good.

"Throat still sore?" She frowned.

"Yeah." He rasped painfully, swallowing hard.

"Do you want something to eat?" She asked him, but he shook his head.

She looked down at him and nodded – he did still look too sick to feel hungry, she thought, taking in his complexion. He was sweating profusely, but shivering, and his skin was a ghostly shade of white.

Doing as she had done with his breakfast that morning she sympathetically took the bowl of soup away – handing him two pills and the water when she returned, which he swallowed gratefully.

"Thank you." He whispered, the words like razor blades in the back of his throat.

She smiled. She didn't need to ask him whether he was feeling any better, despite all the hours of sleep he'd had that afternoon if anything he looked worse.

Castle noticed her anxious expression.

"No need to look so worried." He smiled, doing his best to reassure her – with a voice as rough and tired sounding as gravel. "It's just a cold."

"This is more than just a cold Castle." She told him. "I think you have the flu."

"Same thing." He shrugged.

"Yeah, but only if you're you." She laughed.

Castle feigned a look as though he had taken offence to this, but she knew he was only joking, as he had known she too had been.

She was relieved to have found him awake after he'd slept for so many hours but there was still something about him which made her uneasy. He seemed to be trying too hard to convince her that he was ok – but apart from that she couldn't put her finger on it. He was clearly very unwell – he was listless and had gone almost floppy in the bed before her as though all his limbs had turned to rubber and had been drained on bone matter.

But still there was nothing obvious to cause the depth of her concern, nothing immediately apparent – it was a cold, just a simple cold.

Then why, she asked herself, did she feel so uneasy?

Ominous dark clouds were looming overhead, threatening them with a proverbial thunderstorm, and the storm was about to break. If only they'd known what form that storm was about to take.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

Castle's throat still felt swollen several hours later. He was still having trouble swallowing and as a result his mouth was swimming with an overflow of saliva. His glands were enlarged and felt like two relatively large and jagged stones on either side of his neck, and he had the most intense throbbing in his left ear.

His head felt stuffed full of cotton wool, and his sinuses too were blocked and tender. His nose was completely stuffed up making smell and taste impossible – not that that mattered very much when his stomach was still summersaulting so much that he couldn't eat anything anyway – and he was becoming increasingly infuriated by the one nostril which appeared to be running more than the other.

Of even greater concern to him was the pressure on his chest. It wasn't so bad whilst he remained upright but as soon as he lay down he could feel the crushing weight upon him, squeezing the breath from his lungs. He coughed and wheezed as the fluid filling them further compromised his breathing. He hated being sick – it was disgusting, degrading, and so terribly terribly dull. There was no way Beckett was going to let him go with her to the precinct the next day if he wasn't feeling better.

He turned over in bed, reaching for the glass of water she had left for him on the bedside table, and grimacing as he took a swig – it was tepid, matching the temperature of the room, and if anything made his throat hurt more. He eased himself up in bed, propping himself back with the pillows and popped a couple of Tylenol from the pallet of pills she had also conveniently placed within arm's reach – washing them down with what remained of the liquid in the glass.

Apathetically kicking the bedsheets aside he felt Beckett stir beside him, unconsciously gathering the discarded linen up in her arms. She was still wearing the beige t-shirt and pants she had thrown on that morning, and although he couldn't see outside through the still closed curtains he deduced that it couldn't be bedtime yet, and that she had probably fallen asleep waiting for him to wake up.

He struggled to turn his neck to look as the clock on the bedside table, seeing that it was five o' clock. He shivered – the flu medicine obviously only having taken the very edge off his fever – but his pyjamas were soaked with sweat. It dripped from his hair and ran down the back of his neck, making his clothes stick to him unpleasantly. He needed to change.

Gently easing his legs over the edge of the bed and dangling his feet a few inches above the floor he tried to stand, but as he did so his head began to swim and there was a pounding in his ears which caused him to have to sit back down again. For a moment he felt as though he was going to pass out, but he managed to slowly ease himself back up towards the head of the bed, leaning back against his pillows – pale and breathing heavily – and eventually his spinning head began to clear.

His chest ached from the exertion, his head ached, as did every muscle and bone in his body, and his throat stung. He wanted more water – preferably laced with sugary cordial to coat and sooth his sore and parched throat – but he had been left too drained to try and even attempt getting up again, and he didn't want to wake Kate, and so instead he just sat there trying not to think about how thirsty he was.

His stomach, which had momentarily stopped churning, had started doing summersaults again, but he wanted to try and hold on to what little liquid he had managed to ingest, and the Tylenol, for as long as possible. He was beginning to believe what Kate had said about this being more than a cold – he felt terrible.

He closed his eyes and tried to relax. This time he wanted to try and avoid falling asleep again. He wanted to be awake when Beckett eventually woke up.

But he couldn't recall ever having felt quite this rough before.

He'd never had a cold which had made him feel quite so weak. He was genuinely exhausted, and before long he found himself drifting rapidly back towards oblivion. It was too much effort for his tired body to fight to stay awake. His immune system had been so severely depleted by the bug that the invading pathogens had already gained an upper hand – chipping away at his physical resolve. By the time Kate awoke Castle had already fallen asleep again.

She yawned and stretched, before reaching across to gently stroke his forehead – her heart sinking as she felt the raging heat of his skin. She had been hoping that the Tylenol would have started to help bring his fever down by now, but if anything he felt hotter than he had done earlier. Sweat soaked his clothes and his side of the bed.

She sighed.

There was little more she could do now it seemed than continue to try and keep him comfortable, make sure that he stayed well hydrated, and wait for whatever ailed him to run its natural course.

But Kate still felt uneasy – she couldn't escape the niggling pangs of doubt at the back of her mind. She wasn't one to normally pay too much heed to instinct, and so she tried to brush it aside. As a Detective she relied on the evidence of her own eyes to back up her suspicions – mere conjecture was normally Castle's area of expertise. Still the way that his fever continued to make a fiery furnace of his flesh despite the amount of medicine she had given him unnerved her, and she didn't like what seemed to be happening to him one little bit.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

"Right you." Kate Beckett smiled as she ruffled Richard Castle's hair playfully and grabbed her car keys from where she usually kept them in the bowel on the breakfast counter. "There's healthy snacks in the fridge," She told him, "and I'll see you later. I'm only working a half day today so I'll be back around lunchtime."

"Whatever happened to jello and ice cream?" He asked her as she bent down to kiss him gently on the top of his head.

Kate laughed. She could feel the heat of his skin upon her lips, and pushed his mop of greasy hair back as she placed her hand against his forehead in order to feel his raging fever. She still wasn't happy about the fact that they'd so far struggled to bring it down – but at least it had now settled at a respectably high but manageable 98 degrees.

"They grew up and became fro-yo and sorbet Castle." She told him. "But if you really want ice cream it's in the freezer."

Castle smiled. Despite her insistence that he at least made sure to try and eat some fruit and vegetables whilst she was out he'd known that she wouldn't be cruel enough to leave him at home on his own all day without the obligatory comfort food.

"I hope it's chocolate?" He asked her.

"No, Vanilla." She told him. "Just be grateful that I brought you any at all Castle." She added when she saw the disappointed look he gave her. "Chocolate would have only encouraged you to eat more of it, and you don't need the dairy."

"Yes, but vanilla is so boring." He moaned, flopping back down onto the couch.

She looked at him and smiled.

Kate had taken more than the initial sick day off in order to stay at home and look after him. He'd been so weakened by the flu that he'd initially barely been able to drag himself out of bed, and she hadn't wanted to leave him alone – but now that he was beginning to feel a little better he had finally managed to convince her to go back to work.

For the first couple of days he'd barely been able to get up and crawl to the toilet. The protestations of his bladder had finally reached such climactic intensity however that it had become a clear choice between having to force himself to make the short trip to the bathroom, or divesting himself of its contents where he lay. Even sitting up had caused his head to spin, and so he'd lay there for as long as he could take the pain, but in the interests of cleanliness and comfort he'd finally chosen to brave the latter.

By the morning of the third day he hadn't eaten and had barely drank anything in a little over forty-eight hours. He had been weak and dehydrated but had still managed to haul his deadweight painfully out of the bed and had successfully made it downstairs to the couch before collapsing in an exhausted, shivering and sweating heap.

He'd slept for most of that day, only waking up for a couple of hours when Esposito and Ryan had called round after work. They had been shocked by just how sick Castle had seemed, and surprised when Kate had told them that he was actually now looking a lot better than he had done a couple of days before. They had never seen the flu take anybody in quite the same way before – but had promised to keep the secret that it was Castle who had been the sick one, and not her. Iron Gates would not be too impressed to discover that she had been lied to by one of her best detectives, they realised.

He was still a sickly shade of white, his eyes were dark and sunken, his nose was swollen and an angry shade of pink, and he was wheezy and breathless. It would have been untrue to suggest that they had left Castle's apartment unconcerned that evening – Ryan had even suggested that he should perhaps see a doctor – but Kate had been encouraged by this small but significant sign of progress, and it had finally been enough for Castle to convince her that she'd probably be alright in leaving him alone for a few hours in order to go back to work.

"You might feel a little better if you can take a shower today." She added – making the suggestion as she got up and prepared to leave, kissing him again on the lips – not caring if she herself caught the infection. "It might help to make you feel a little more human if you freshen up a little."

"Hang on a minute," He asked her, "are you saying I smell?"

"No, of course not…" She smiled, before seeming to reconsider this. There was definitely an aroma of sickness about him. He hadn't washed or cleaned his teeth in a couple of days, and the sour smell of vapour rub lingered in the air.

"Well… maybe a little." She laughed. "But then again after three days in bed I think anybody would."

He sighed.

"I hate being sick." He groaned miserably. "You can't do anything but else sleep, and lie around on the couch all day watching crap television. If I'm going to be stuck at home I would at least like to feel that I'm doing something productive with my time, like writing."

"Yes… because duvet days are most people's idea of absolute hell." Kate rolled her eyes sarcastically.

He must have been feeling better, she thought, even if his complexion was still ghostly – he'd passed through the initial first phase of the illness, and the pathetic moaning, which usually signalled the recovery of one's mind whilst it waited for the rest of the body to catch up, had begun.

She looked at the clock on the wall – if she didn't leave soon she was going to be late for work. She still didn't really want to leave him though – despite his apparent progress something about him this morning was making her feel uneasy. It was almost as though he was trying too hard to convince her that he was alright, and there was a strange, nagging doubt at the back of her mind pulling her back.

His dark eyes held her gaze for a moment – their colour faded by fatigue, and clouded by fever, but their softness seemed somehow accentuated. There was nothing in the way that he looked at her to account for her concern.

"I'll see you later then." She smiled, and he nodded.

"Yeah… see you later." He sighed – rubbing at a strange ache in his chest.

He frowned. The ache was sharp – growing in intensity. It had seemed to come from nowhere, and for a moment he wondered from where it had come – but he put it down to nothing more than the congestion on his chest, and whilst Kate finally left for work that morning he rolled over onto his side and tried to get some sleep – blissfully ignorant of what was to come.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

Castle awoke with a start to the sensation of a dagger being driven into his chest. He's arms and legs flailed as he failed to prevent a strangled exclamation of pain escaping him – reaching out for something solid to grab onto. He searched blindly for Kate in the bed beside him – but the only thing his grasping hands were rewarded with was empty air and bedsheets. He turned to look for her but her side of the bed was empty.

"Kate!" He called out to her – his voiced getting lodged somewhere in the space between his wind pipe and strangled tongue – a pathetic murmur echoing through a barren flat. "Kate!"

The second time around was louder – but there was still no response.

He turned to look at the clock on the beside table and saw that it was already ten o' clock. He had slept right through the alarm, and breakfast – not that he felt much like eating anything anyway.

She must have already headed out to the prescient he thought, breathing a deep and shaky breath as the realisation hit him that he was on his own – but this only served to drive the knife even deeper into his chest.

He tried not to panic and eased himself up in the bed a little.

His chest had felt tight for days, but he'd known that wasn't uncommon after a bought of the flu and so he hadn't initially been too concerned about the huge weight pressing down on his breastbone, making it difficult for him to breathe.

His throat wasn't quite as sore as it had been – the pain was now more of a horrible sand papery type sensation now that the razor blades which had been systematically hacking away at the back of his throat had gone. He still didn't feel hungry, but he didn't feel sick anymore either, the headache and fever still remained, as did the joint and muscle pains, but as he found himself able to eat and drink a little more without the fear of bringing it all back up again as soon as it had hit his empty stomach the dizziness had eased.

He hadn't been telling Kate a lie when he'd told her that he was now feeling a lot better than he had been – but then the chest pains had begun.

They'd started a couple of days ago and had been nothing more than a dull ache at first. He'd put the pressure in his chest and the painful throb down to nothing more than muscle strain caused by the persistent cough which inevitably accompanied the flu.

Eating had been difficult because of the discomfort this caused him, but that hadn't seemed to matter or been too hard to hide from Kate because the virus had already affected his appetite, and he hadn't been eating a lot anyway.

Deep breathing had been painful and so instead he'd tried to focus on taking shorter, shallower breaths, and had avoided any more strenuous activities which might have made deeper breathing a necessity. Even scaling the stairs had proved a challenge – but somehow he'd managed to limit the strain on his lungs by taking surreptitious short breaks half way up and reducing the number of trips he made.

It had hurt him the most when lying down however, and so he had compensated for this by sleeping partially raised up in the bed.

Kate hadn't questioned it when he'd told her that the congestion on his lungs was making it difficult for him to sleep lying down – instead she'd nestled her head into his lap, letting the heat of his fevered skin warm her and the sound of his heartbeat lull her to sleep.

Neither of them had realised then that Castle's was a heart already in trouble.

He'd put up with the discomfort for days, and had tried to hide it from her for as long as he possibly could – but the past couple of mornings he'd awoken in the most excruciating pain.

On previous occasions raising himself up in the bed had helped to ease the crushing pain in his chest, but on his morning instead it sent tendrils radiating down his left arm and up into his jaw – and he could no longer hide it from her.

He whimpered, forcing himself to fight it just a little while longer.

He reached for his phone, punching in the first few letters of her name and waiting for his contact list to flag up her number.

She picked up after only a couple of rings.

"Castle? What is it?" She asked him. He hadn't even said anything yet and already she sounded concerned – her voice was like a beacon of light at the end of a dark tunnel, dripping anxiety like sweet sap from a tree. He was deathly afraid but somehow the sound of her voice and the knowledge that she was only on the other end of the line made him feel a little better – it was comforting to know that although she couldn't do anything to help him he wasn't completely on his own.

"Kate…" He struggled to talk as each sharp intake of breath increased the vice like hold the pain had over his chest. "Could you come home please?" He asked her. "I think there might be something seriously wrong with me…"

"What is it?" She asked him – her anxiety peaking as she heard the desperation in his voice, and detected the physical strain behind his words.

He felt guilty for what he was about to tell her – even more so for keeping it from her for the past few days. The last thing he wanted to do was worry her – but whatever was happening to him now he realised that it was far more serious than either of them could have predicted a few days ago, and he couldn't hide it.

He needed help.

He needed her.

"I've been experiencing chest pains…" He told her.

There was a momentary pause at the other end of the line – a short gap between the time it took her to process the information and then prompt her to take action. He didn't know where she was exactly but he presumed that she must have been at her desk as he heard the clatter of a chair being pushed back.

"I'm on my way…" She told him. "Stay on the line with me Rick…"

He heard the fear in her voice – fear he knew was responsible for.

He heard her shout something to Esposito and Ryan – just about making out the words 'got to go', and 'something's wrong with' and then 'Castle'. He also thought he heard them shout something back in response which sounded vaguely like they were asking her if she wanted them to go with her, but the more dominant sound was the clatter of her heals against the office floor, and she evidently didn't hear them.

It took her a good twenty minutes to reach him – even without having to negotiate rush hour traffic – and despite the fact that she stayed on the line the whole time, trying to keep him taking but doing most of the talking herself, it was still one of the most painfully long twenty minutes of Castle's life and she appeared shocked by his appearance when she finally saw him - perhaps it was a good thing that he couldn't see how bad he looked.

He wasn't doubled over because that only drove the hypothetical knife even deeper – but he was pale – almost grey – and the sweat was pouring from his face, as he clutched and rubbed at his chest.

"How bad?" She asked as she made her way over to him, reaching out a hand to feel his skin – which she noted was cold and clammy – before moving two fingers down to feel the pulse in the side of his neck.

"Bad…" He nodded.

"How long have you had them?" She questioned him.

"A few days…" He told her.

"A few days?" She exclaimed. "CASTLE!"

"I'm sorry…" He grimaced.

"Why didn't you tell me?" She asked him.

"I didn't think it was that serious…" He faltered. He seemed as confused as she was. "It was the flu…" Was all he could say. "I had the flu…"

His entire body went into spasm as another wave of sharp pain was driven like a bolt of lightning through his chest, and he aimed a look at her which appeared so frightened and unsure that it unnerved her.

"This isn't the flu is it?" He finally grasped.

"I'm calling Josh!" She told him, as she reached for her phone in her pocket, and as she did so she grasped him by the hand, squeezing it hard.

To Castle's mixed surprise and relief it didn't take Josh long to respond to the call. He hadn't even realised that she still had his number programmed into her phone.

If Kate had of been thinking straight she might have asked herself why she thought to call Josh when there were hundreds, if not thousands, of other cardiologists in New York City. Later on she would ask herself why she hadn't thought to call an ambulance first, but perhaps, on some sort of subconscious level, she had been trying to jump the system by going directly to the one man she knew could help.

She was scared, and it was only natural that she should seek out someone familiar who had more knowledge of how to deal with the situation than she. If your best friend was a police officer and you had been burgled would you not call them first? Despite their differences Josh was a good man, and she knew that whatever differences they had had in the past he would not turn away if he could in any way help.

He's was a voice Kate hadn't heard in a very long time – she hadn't even been sure that he would answer given the fact that it was her – but when he did Kate turned to look at Castle and she smiled, willing him to stay strong for her just a little while longer.

"Josh I know that I'm probably the last person you want to talk to now." She told him - willing him not to put the phone down on her. "But there's something really wrong with Castle... I didn't know who else to call."

She was fighting back the tears which threatened to fall.

Castle obviously couldn't hear Josh's side of the conversation, but whatever he said made Kate noticeably relax. She turned to him and put a reassuring hand on his shoulder.

"It's alright Rick…" She soothed him, just before launching into a hasty explanation of the situation to Josh in the hope that he would be able to help them. "Just hold on in there… you're going to be alright…"


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

"Breathe in for me nice and deep Castle."

"I can't." Castle groaned.

Beckett sat beside him on the couch, one hand wrapped reassuringly around his shoulders to help steady him. His shirt was open as Josh listened to his heart and lungs to try and establish a possible cause of Castle's chest pain, but it was difficult when the pain was beginning to impede on his breathing. He didn't like the look of Castle's complexion. He had quickly deduced that the problem wasn't in his lungs but had now already lingered with the stethoscope for far too long over the area of his heart for Beckett's liking.

His expression was also making her nervous.

Josh stood back and sighed. He placed a hand to Castle's forehead and could feel that he had a fever without the need for a thermometer.

"How long have you had the pain?" He asked him. He secured the cuff of the blood pressure machine he had brought with him around Castle's upper arm and inflated it with the touch of button.

"A few days." Castle responded. "But it's been getting progressively worse."

Josh nodded. He waited for the monitor to take the reading.

"It's low." He said, analysing the data once the numbers appeared on the screen.

"He had the flu about a week ago." Beckett told him.

"And you say that it's a sharp pain as opposed to a dull ache?" He questioned him further, removing the cuff.

Castle nodded. "It's worse when I lie down or take a deep breath." He explained. But the effort of talking caused more spiteful tendrils of pain to creep searchingly through his chest.

He whimpered.

"It's like a knife – like I'm being stabbed… repeatedly." He grimaced.

"It's alright Castle." Josh sighed. He then turned to look at Kate and observed her anxious expression. She looked at Castle with such affection in her eyes – every fine line of her beautiful face accentuated by the concern she felt for the man in her arms. He didn't think he'd ever seen her look at him in quite the same way.

Richard Castle completed her. He made her happy – he made her content in a way that Josh knew he never had – and instead of making him feel jealous he was surprised that instead it made him smile.

"Really Kate…" He did his best to reassure her. "It's alright. It's not a heart attack."

"Then what is it?" She asked him.

He held her worried gaze. At this stage he didn't have enough information to comment with any degree of certainty, but there was an abnormality which he had picked up on whilst listening to Castle's heart which needed further investigation, and Josh would have been lying if he'd said he wasn't concerned.

"Well I'm not yet sure." He said.

Josh gently massaged the area either side of Castle's jaw bone – checking his lymph nodes for any swelling – before placing two fingers to one abnormally limp wrist and feeling for a pulse.

"Based on his symptoms I'm concerned that it might be something called endocarditis." He told her.

"Is that bad?" She pressed him.

"I won't lie to you Kate. If it is, then yes, it's potentially very serious." He explained. "But it's also incredibly rare in healthy hearts."

"Would that explain the chest pain?" Castle asked.

"Well, that's the thing, based on the type and intensity of your pain I'd say that it's almost certainly more suggestive of pericarditis, which is still a serious heart infection, but significantly more common." He responded.

Castle stiffened. Josh saw the fear in his eyes as he said this – it was the fear experienced by most people when they were delivered the blow of a potential heart condition – and he swallowed hard. When he spoke he somehow managed to keep the tremor out of his voice for the most part however.

"Ok…" He took as deep a breath as he could manage. "So where do we go from here?" He asked.

"Well we need to get you into hospital and do some tests to confirm a diagnosis." Josh told him. "If it is endocarditis then we need to act quickly. Either way we need to start you on IV anti-biotics as soon as possible to prevent the spread and worsening of the infection."

"What, right now?" Kate asked.

"I'm afraid so." Josh nodded.

"Well, should I call for an ambulance?" She asked him - feeling guilty that this was something somebody should have probably done in the first place, but her instincts had told her to call Josh.

But Josh shook his head.

"By the time they get here, we can actually get him there a lot quicker ourselves if we get a move on." He told her.

"I'll call Alexis and Martha." She said, getting to her feet, but Castle reached out a shaky hand to grab her arm and stop her.

"No Kate," He protested – the movement causing his body to stiffen as more pain surged through his chest. It was strange - it seemed to her as though so long as he stayed propped upright, didn't take any deep breaths, and didn't make any sudden movements he was alright - but as soon as he did any of these things the pain came back with a vengeance. She could feel his fingers constrict around her arm – his skin cold and sticky.

"Let them enjoy the rest of their trip, they'll be back in a few days anyway." He pleaded with her.

"Castle!" She exclaimed. "We don't even know how serious this might be! You can't keep this from them!"

He looked back at her – his face full of fear and worry. He was doing his best to appear strong, she could see that, but he was only human. He knew that she was right of course, he was only trying to protect his family but he knew that they wouldn't thank him in the long term for keeping this from them.

"It's going to be alright you know." She smiled at him at him, and she gently squeezed his hand. He tried to smile back at her, but his heart wasn't really in the gesture and the smile didn't make it past his cheekbones.

He sighed.

"Ok… call them." He finally nodded.

"I'll call ahead." Josh told them. "Let the hospital know that we're coming, see if they can have a room ready by the time we arrive. When you've done that Kate do you think you could throw Castle a few things together whilst I help him down to the car? He's going to be in for a while I'm afraid."

Kate nodded, but as Josh turned away from her, fumbling for his phone in his jacket pocket, she tapped him on the shoulder and drew him aside.

"Josh, can you be absolutely sure this isn't a heart attack?" She asked him, concerned.

"I can promise you this isn't a heart attack Kate." He assured her. "Many heart conditions have the same symptoms, including pain and shortness of breath, and to the untrained eye all episodes of chest pain can be misconstrued as a heart attack, but his symptoms subside when he sits up and are worse when he takes a deep breath, which is a key symptom of some kind of infection. I also heard a slight abnormality, known as a pericardial rub, whilst listening to his chest, meaning that his pericardium is descended. That is what is causing him pain."

She nodded.

"The sooner we get him on anti-biotics and painkillers the sooner he should start to feel better." He told her. "But we won't know the full extent of the infection or any damage done until we've performed a few tests."

"How serious is this likely to be though?" She asked him. "I mean, are we talking a few days in hospital, a short course of anti-biotics, and then back home again within a week, or something more serious here?"

"Look I'm going to level with you here Kate." Josh sighed. "At best he's probably looking at at least a week on IV anti-biotics and a few days bed rest." He told her. "At worst though, and depending on how advanced the infection is, he may need surgery. As I say I can't be sure how severe things are at the moment. I need to do a number of tests to confirm a diagnosis and then work out a suitable treatment plan once I have all the data in front of me. You wouldn't convict a man of murder without all the evidence would you?" He smiled.

"No." She shook her head.

"You have to trust me though." He said. "Whatever needs to happen Castle is going to be alright, but I have to call the hospital now and I need you to go and call Martha and Alexis. The sooner we start the ball rolling with this the better."

She nodded, but as she turned away she quickly turned back to face him.

"I want to thank you Josh, for coming, and for... doing everything you can for us." She told him. "I know I probably should have called an ambulance, but I immediately thought of you. I mean, I'm too close to Castle. Normally as a cop you're able to rationalise things, to do the practicle thing, but it's harder when it's somebody you love. I just wanted the very best care for him."

"It's alright." Josh smiled at her. It wasn't the sort of smile she had once been used to receiving from him, but it was a reassuring one non-the-less.

"Even so, it's not like me." She said.

"Who knows how they would react in this situation. You did what you thought was the right thing at the time." He sighed. "And your instincts are rarely wrong Kate." He told her. "I can get him admitted a lot quicker than if he'd been taken in by ambulance."

Castle again shifted uncomfortably in his seat and as Kate made a bee-line for the bedroom she turned and smiled at him. Josh meanwhile bent down beside him as he punched in the number for hospital admissions - comfortingly close. He was on the phone with hospital administrations only a couple of minutes, and when he finally hung up the reciever he turned to him.

"How you doing?" He asked him, placing two fingers to the side of his wrist to check his pulse.

"Alright, I guess, at the moment." Castle nodded, voice still sounding a little strained though. Josh took note of the rhythmic beating beneath his fingertips, before withdrawing his hand.

"Then how about we see if we can't get you down to the car?" He asked him.

Castle nodded, although Josh could tell that he was probably going to struggle. He still seemed breathless and grimaced as he helped him to stand. He had to take things slow - he moved stiffly - and the cold sweat ran down his face from the exertion. Josh helped to steady him, but as he helped Castle to carefully ease himself up off the sofa the man whimpered and froze, doubled over - it taking him a few seconds to compose himself as he waited for the fresh wave of pain to subside.

"Car?" Castle asked, a pained grimace still etched into his face, once Josh had helped him to his feet and he had managed to compose himself again. "Whatever happened to the motorcycle?"

"Well I just figured I was getting a little old." Josh told him. "When it started to become a bit of a running joke with the guys at the hospital I realised the time had come to trade it in for something more sensible."

"So I guess motorcycle boy is no more then?" Castle grinned.

"I suppose we all have to grow up sometime." Josh smiled, and Castle supposed that he was right. He wanted to return the gesture - to say something suitably poignant in response, but as he took a step towards the door - putting one foot gingerly in front of the other - lack of food, and dehydration, coupled with exhaustion and pain worked to make him feel suddenly light headed, and his head began to spin. He stopped.

Noticing a subtle change come over him Josh frowned. Something was defiantly seriously wrong. Castle was clearly very unwell, and the sooner they could get him into hospital and on medication the better the outcome was likely to be.


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

Castle looked down at the line feeding saline and an assortment of medication into the back of his hand, drip by rainy drip. Although an ECG had quickly confirmed that it was not a heart attack Josh had immediately started him on a course of broad-spectrum anti-biotics and had taken Castle away for a battery of tests to confirm the presence of an infection. This had included a chest X-Ray, ultra-sound, full blood work and even an MRI, leaving Castle to wonder that whatever he'd once thought about the man he was at least thorough. They needed to establish the cause and extent, and isolate the type of infection in order to implement a proper treatment plan. Broad-spectrum anti-biotics were all that he could give him for now, but they were not a long term solution.

He'd been allocated a private room - as nice a room as one could expect from a hospital - and he was already feeling a little better, although the continued presence of a fever further emphasised that until they could identify the specific bacteria causing the infection he would continue to grow steadily and progressively sicker. Broad-spectrum anti-biotics would not hold off the progression of the infection forever, and of even greater concern was that Josh still hadn't confirmed what they were dealing with - whether it was pericarditis, endocarditis, or something else entirely.

Kate had sat in the chair beside Castle's bed, holding his hand, all afternoon, whilst he mostly slept the first unbroken sleep he'd had in days. There hadn't been much need for a sedative, once the painkillers had had time to take effect exhaustion had finally taken a hold, but Josh had given him one anyway to keep him calm and comfortable, and this had more or less knocked him out for the rest of the afternoon. A nurse had looked in on them every half an hour, and Kate had noticed a couple of different faces had lingered around to keep her company for a few minutes at a time whilst they checked on her fiancée's progress and made a note of his stats on the chart at the end of his bed. She had been grateful to the women for their kindness, but they all had a job to do, and she had understood when they'd had to hurry off, leaving her alone again - and hadn't judged them for it.

By about four o' clock they'd been at the hospital for just a little under five hours, and Kate realised that she hadn't seen Josh since he'd first taken Castle away shortly after their arrival - an orderly and a nurse had been the ones who'd brought him back to the room a couple of hours later. When she'd asked after him one of the nurses had told her that Josh was in surgery, and that he'd be in to talk to them as soon as he was finished - but she hadn't hung around for long enough for Kate to ask her how long that might be, and a further hour passed before Castle began to stir.

Despite her frustration at the lack of information Kate knew in her heart that the hospital staff were doing their best. They'd started Castle on oxygen as soon as he'd arrived, had immediately put him on a cocktail of medication, had hooked him up to a heart monitor, and there were nurses popping in to check on him twice an hour. She knew deep down that Josh was hot holding back information and that he would let them know as soon as he had the results of Castle's tests back and knew anymore himself - she had to keep on reminding herself that he was not Josh's only patient, but that still didn't stop her fretting, and by the time Castle finally regained full consciousness it was hard for her to keep the pent up anxiety out of her tone.

"Hey." She smiled at him as he opened his eyes - blinking - gently stroking the back of his hand with the tip of her thumb where she still clasped it within her own. "How are you feeling?" She asked him.

"It's kind of hard to tell." He smiled back up at her - his vouce hoarse and gruff from lack of use - but the smell of food drifting into his room through the open doorway made his stomach lurch and his heart rate quicken with the anxiety. The wave on the heart monitor peaked slightly, registering this change - but not dramatically so - and he was somewhat grateful to be temporarily nill-by-mouth whilst hospital staff tried to establish the nature of what afflicted him. "How long have I been asleep?" He asked her.

"A few hours." She told him. "Josh gave you a sedative to keep you calm whilst they performed a few tests. You've been unconscious ever since."

"Has he said anything yet?" Castle asked her a little anxiously, but Kate shook her head.

"He's in surgery at the moment." She told him. "He'll be in to talk to us as soon as he can."

Another whole hour almost passed before Josh finally knocked upon the door of Castle's room and entered - Castle had briefly fallen asleep again, his hand still tightly clasped within Kate's, but had awoken not long before the cardiologist made an appearance. Josh smiled at them both as he entered, and Kate observed how tired her ex-boyfriend looked. His eyes were still keen and alert, their sparkle kindled by adrenaline, but their lids were pink and puffy and his complexion was a few shades paler than when she'd last seen him.

"Hey." He looked down at Castle in the bed before him as he set about checking the data on the chart at the end of his bed. "How are you feeling?" He asked him. It was then that Kate noticed the IV bag in his hand and stood aside as Josh made his way around the edge of the bed – giving him room to adjust and replace Castle's drip.

"A little better I think." Castle nodded, watching as once he'd done this Josh injected something else into the bag. He and Kate looked up at the doctor anxiously – the only question both wanted answering clearly written upon both of their faces, but neither was forced to break the highly charged silence as it was Josh who spoke first, once he'd finally finished completing his routine checks and he'd made a fresh note of Castle's stats on his chart.

"We've got the results of your tests back." He explained. "The X-rays showed no significant abnormalities, but both the ultrasound and the MRI confirmed the presence of a pericardial infection. It's not endocarditis."

Kate breathed a sigh of relief, but Josh continued – evidently it was not all good news.

"Your white blood cell count is very high though, which is indicative of the severity of the infection." He told them. "However we have managed to isolate a specific bacteria, and the anti-biotic I have just given you is intended to specifically target that. We are continuing to run further cultures to check for the presence of multiple organisms to try and explain why you became so sick so quickly."

"So, he's going to be alright?" Kate asked.

Josh hesitated, and Kate noticed that when he next spoke he directed his gaze seriously at Castle.

"Given rest, and time I see no reason why you shouldn't eventually make a full recovery." He told him. "But I'm going to be honest with you here, the infection is a little worse than I first expected when I examined you earlier, and there is a lot of fluid in the cavity surrounding your heart."

"What doss that mean?" Castle asked, a worried frown puckering his brow, and his voice wavering somewhat. The initial relief he'd felt upon realising that he did not have endocarditis was now beginning to fade, to be replaced by trepidation as it began to dawn on him that he'd just been told that he had a heart condition which was in its own way no less serious.

"There is a risk," Josh began to gently explain to him, "that the infected fluid may begin to put pressure on your heart, effecting its ability to pump properly. You may also begin to experience some difficulty breathing."

"And if that were to happen?" Kate questioned him - he noticed that her brow too was furrowed with concern.

"There are things we can do," He smiled, "if it comes down to it, but the best thing you can do now is rest and give the anti-biotics the best chance they have to work. I know it's difficult," He told him, "but try not to worry."

"I'm afraid that's rather easier said than done." Castle sighed, and Josh nodded in understanding.

Kate wondered how many times he'd had this conversation with people before - and how many people he'd told not to worry who had later lost their lives.

Later on when Josh was gone, and Castle had finally fallen asleep again she would allow herself to give in to her fears. Perhaps she might even allow herself a quiet cry - that had usually helped her before - but not now. Now she had to be strong for Castle in the way that he had had cause to be for her in the past.

She could't wait for Martha and Alexis to come home. Neither of them had answered when she'd rung them earlier, and so she'd left a message on Martha's answer phone - they must have received it by now, she wondered - and then with a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach she remembered that she'd switched her phone to silent as soon as they'd got to the hospital.

Scrabbling in the bottom of her bag for it she quickly pulled it out to reveal twenty missed calls - she paled.

"What's the matter?" Castle frowned, and Kate rather sheepishly turned the screen of her phone towards him. When he saw what it was which had brought about the sudden change in her he broke out into a weak laugh, which quickly transcended into a painful cough.

When he'd finally recovered he turned to her breathlessly.

"You're going to be in so much trouble." He smiled.


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9**

"Oh Richard!" Martha sighed as she and Alexis burst into his room the next morning. Alexis pushed past her grandmother and was first to reach her father's bedside – she looked terrified. Her eyes were still bloodshot and swollen from hours spent crying and he instinctively reached out a hand to gently cup her cheek. They'd cut their trip short as soon as they'd received Kate's message that Castle was in the hospital – and had evidently driven through the night to make it home to be with him.

"I'm ok mom." He smiled, looking to Alexis as he said this to try and reassure her.

"You're in the hospital for God's sake" You're definitely not ok!" Martha exclaimed.

Castle thought about this for a second. He thought about the pain in his chest. He looked at the cannula in the back of his hand and at the line feeding fluids and anti-biotics into his bloodstream, and had to concede that on his occasion his mother possibly did have a valid point.

He was very ill – he felt very ill – and despite the front he put on to try and shield the people he loved there was no escaping the reality. There seemed little point in trying to hide it from them. But still it wouldn't do to let them know just how scared he was.

"Well, alright." He faltered, reluctantly admitting defeat. "I'm not ok, but it's not as bad as it looks."

"What did the doctor say?" She asked him.

"Pericarditis… a minor infection that's all." He told them.

"Card…" His mother frowned, as Alexis sat down on the edge of the bed beside him, her hand instinctively interlocking into his. He understood her need for physical contact. She needed to reassure herself that her father was still there. "Isn't that to do with the heart?" She asked.

"It's a heart infection mom." He explained.

"Oh God dad!" His daughter gasped.

"Look," He said, locking eyes with the two frightened, glistening, blue orbs starring back at him, and he squeezed her hand. It was a father's job to take care of his child – and he hated to see Alexis upset about anything – but it especially hurt to know that he was the cause of her distress. "It's not as bad as it sounds… really!" He insisted. "Josh initially thought that it might be something called endocarditis which is much more serious. As this is the milder of the two conditions I'd say I got off rather lightly."

"Josh? What, you mean Katie's Josh?" Martha asked.

"Well, he's the only Josh I know well enough to be on first name terms with." Castle responded.

"He's your doctor?"

Martha seemed a little confused – Josh's was a name she hadn't heard in a very long time.

He nodded.

"Kate called him when I started experiencing chest pains." He explained. "He's the one who brought me here."

Castle's mother tried but failed miserably to conceal her surprise. Josh and Castle's association had been strained at best and their last meeting had not exactly ended amicably. She hadn't even realised that he was back in New York.

On the other hand however that had all been a very long time ago. People changed and so did their opinions. He had loved Kate once, and he was a good man, and so it stood to reason that a worried phone call from her even now would bring him running. Either way Martha didn't care – he had quite possibly saved her son's life and for that reason she was grateful to him.

"Well all I can say is thank God he did!" She exclaimed. "Oh Richard what are we going to do with you?"

"Does it hurt very bad dad?" Alexis asked.

"Well it's not a picnic in the park sweetheart." He smiled honestly at her. He wasn't going to lie – he had learnt a very long time ago that the best way to protect his daughter was to tell her the truth, "But the medication makes it bearable. Although," he sighed, "if I was being honest I'd say it certainly sits very high in the top ten most painful conditions of my life."

"You said the same thing about a paper cut when you were five years old." Martha laughed.

"Excuse me," Castle feigned offence to this, "your son is in a hospital bed here. I would expect a little more sympathy from my own mother."

"Don't listen to her dad." Alexis smiled. "You should have seen her last night. She was worried sick about you."

"Well of course I was!" Martha looked from her grand-daughter to her son as she made her way over and sat in the chair at the side of his bed – taking him by his other hand and stroking the backs of his fingers with her thumb. "Once you're a mother you're always a mother, no matter how big and old your baby gets – you were my everything from the day you were born Richard. I don't know what I would do if anything happened to you." She told him.

"Wow…" Castle smiled. "I should get sick more often!"

"Don't you even think about it!" She said, hitting out playfully at him with the back of her hand, but accidently catching him in the ribs. There was a sharp intake of breath and then Castle doubled over in pain.

"Dad!" Alexis panicked.

"I'll get a doctor!" Martha gasped as she got to her feet, before running from the room.


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10**

Josh was paged but by the time he arrived Castle had already been stabilised and Kate arrived soon after. Josh seemed concerned by the deterioration he observed in Castle's condition. The doctor on call had already started him on oxygen therapy through a cannula in his nose, but he was concerned that he still seemed somewhat uncomfortable and so replaced it with an oxygen mask. He gave him a painkiller to try and relieve some of his distress and Castle fell asleep without the need for a sedative shortly after.

Castle's condition still hadn't improved a few days later. He tried to hide it from Kate and his family but he couldn't conceal it from Josh.

After several days with very little sign of improvement to his condition he was still in pain, he still couldn't fully lie down and preferred to sleep partially upright – propped up with pillows – in the bed, and he had started to experience some difficulty breathing which was not associated with residual pain.

Josh ordered another set of chest X-rays, and an ultrasound and ECG – he had his suspicions about what was happening to Castle but he needed the results of further tests to substantiate it. Josh revealed the results to Castle during a routine examination a few days later.

"So, how's your pain?" He asked him, moving the stethoscope carefully over the surface of his chest, whilst Castle took a few deep breaths – which still weren't quite deep enough – before he took a step back, looping his stethoscope back around his neck. He looked down at Castle, waiting for an answer.

Castle sighed. "It's not so good." He replied.

"About the same? Any worse?" Josh questioned.

"A little worse." He admitted.

"Having trouble breathing?"

"Yeah," Castle nodded, "and there's a pressure here." He explained, pointing to his sternham. "It feels like there's a two tone weight pressing down on my chest."

Josh nodded – he had obviously just confirmed his suspicions.

"I had to ask you I'm afraid." He explained, as he placed two fingers to Castle's wrist to check his pulse. "But I can see that you're having some difficulty. You're breathing isn't currently significantly compromised, but I can hear that you already have some breathlessness. The thing is it's like I explained to you the other day, there is a lot of infected fluid trapped in the space around your heart, and the anti-biotics don't appear to be working. We need to drain the fluid to relieve some of the pressure, and then you should start to feel better."

Castle looked at him – a strange expression passed across his face. Josh thought he looked afraid – which wouldn't be unusual given the circumstances. When he next spoke his voice shook slightly, seeming to confirm his anxiety.

Castle swallowed nervously. He took a deep breath and then grimaced.

"How do you propose to do that?" He asked.

"Well, there are a couple of options," Josh explained, "but given the amount of fluid present and the fact that anti-biotics have proved ineffective I'd recommend something called a pericardial window, and a chest tube to enable the fluid to drain away slowly over the course of a few days."

"You mean surgery?" Castle asked. He sounded alarmed by this.

"It is a surgical procedure, yes." Josh confirmed.

"Any risks?"

He thought he noticed Castle's hand begin to tremble.

"All surgery carries risk Rick," He smiled as he spoke – heart surgery was a daunting prospect for most people, but as a heart surgeon Josh was as skilled with dealing with frightened patients as he was in the operating theatre, "but I'll go through all these with you in due course." He assured him.

Castle nodded.

"Would you like me to let your family know?" Josh asked.

"You'd probably explain things to them better than me." He said. "I'd probably end up scaring them."

Josh nodded. He suspected that whatever anybody said would end up worrying them at the moment – fear would be a natural reaction to this situation – but with fear came a lot of questions which Castle was not up to answering.

"Just try to take it easy." He advised him. "No getting up, no trying to prove to us all that you're superman. Rest is your friend, not your enemy at the moment."

He patted Castle reassuringly on the shoulder.

"I'll be back to check on you and explain the procedure to you in a bit more depth later, if you think of any questions in the meantime you can ask me then."

"Yeah… thanks Josh." Castle nodded, as the man turned to go and he watched him leave. He waited for the doctor to close the door behind him before giving himself over to his fears and releasing a pent up breath which caused a sudden surge of pain to ricochet through his chest like a bullet out of a barrel. He whimpered.

He may have no longer been a child, and he knew that adults were supposed to be able to handle news like this in a way he didn't seem to know how – but in that moment Richard Castle really wished that he'd had his mother by his side when Josh had delivered the news - to hold his hand, and hug him, and tell him that everything was going to be alright..


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter 11**

"Kate, I'm scared." Castle said.

"I know." She smiled. "But everything's going to be alright. I'm here."

He tried to bite back the tears – making his eyes burn, and threatening to fall – but he couldn't hold them back forever, and as they began to fall she brushed them away. He'd already been given a pre-med and the sedative was making it harder for him to control his emotions.

"I'm sorry." He sniffed. "I'm not being very strong about this am I?"

"Rick," She sighed, "you're about to have heart surgery. I don't think this is one of those things anybody expects you to be strong about. It's our turn to be strong for you."

The orderlies would be down to take him down to theatre soon. Martha and Alexis had already given him their fair share of hugs and kisses and – despite her reluctance to leave – her grandmother had finally convinced the teenager to go and grab a coffee with her in the hospital cafeteria, giving the two of them a few minutes alone together.

Kate was glad – seeing her father in this vulnerable state would have worried Alexis and this would only have upset Castle further. No little girl should have to see their father cry, she thought – fathers were rocks, they were pillars of strength when the roof was caving in, they were the ones who kissed the grazes better and chased the monsters away. Kate had seen her father cry, so many times since the evening of her mother's murder, and every tear had seared and burnt, leaving a permanent imprint on her heart.

She clambered into the bed beside him and held him close to her, kissing him on the forehead before moving down to his lips.

"I'm here." She promised him. "I've got you, and you're going to be alright."

He wrapped his arms around her.

She loved Castle so much – she couldn't believe it had taken her four years to realise it – that everything she'd ever really wanted had been right there in front of her the whole time. All those years she'd spent in pursuit of her mother's killer had blinded her. Her need for answers had become her driving obsession; it had blinkered her to everything else worth getting up for in the morning, and in the pursuit of death she had forgotten how to live.

But Richard Castle had come along and changed all that. He'd drifted into her life one day like a dandelion seed on a breeze, and had changed it forever. Unable to beat the habit of a lifetime she'd initially resisted this change – fighting him every step of the way. She hadn't made it easy for him to get close to her, or to become a part of her life, but still he had stayed – he had never given up on her, even when she'd given up on herself.

In a strange twist he had given her stability, becoming the harbour lights guiding her home when her ship had seemed so hopelessly lost at sea. It was ironic in a way that a man who'd made his living spinning fiction and fairy-tale was the one who'd kept her feet rooted so firmly on solid ground.

Some days when she woke up and his was the first face she saw in the morning she would have to pinch herself. Their life together was one she'd never thought she could have. He was rich, and famous, and she was just ordinary. He could have had the pick of any woman he wanted, and yet he'd chosen her a long time before she'd even realised that she wanted him to.

"I love you Kate." He whispered – his words slurred by the drugs in his system.

Richard Castle had never been lucky in love before Kate Beckett – she was everything he'd been missing from his first two wives, and so much more. He'd married them because it had seemed like the right thing to do at the time, and although one of these marriages had blessed him with the greatest and most precious gift of all – his daughter Alexis – he couldn't now honestly say that he had ever married for love before.

What he'd once interpreted as love had been lust, it had been companionship, convenience, pure physical attraction – but never anything akin to what he now felt for Kate.

"Don't fight it." She soothed him, recognising that he was trying to fight against the effects of the sedative. He was still afraid, but knowing that she was so close seemed to have eased him a little, allowing him to recover some strength, and she wiped away what remained of his tears.

"I love you too." She whispered back. "With all my heart, and I'm not going anywhere."

"Well that's alright then." He smiled. "Because I don't intend to either."

They lay together in silence after that, their arms wrapped around each other - savouring their moment. Castle relaxed into her and closed his eyes, and she allowed herself to be comforted by the sound of his breathing.

She kissed him when the orderlies came to take him away, and he grabbed her hand as though he didn't want to let her go, giving it a hard squeeze.

"See you later then?" He asked her, sounding uncertain. Josh had explained all the risks of the surgery to him – one of which he knew to be cardiac arrest.

"Yeah." She smiled. "See you later."

Being so afraid of death would make Castle focus on living, she told herself, and as she watched him being wheeled away from her she reminded herself that it was Josh who had once saved her life.

She trusted him to do his best, and knew that if anyone would do everything within their power to take care of him and see that Castle came through the surgery alright it was him.


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter 12**

Josh looked down at the man lying on the table before him. A million people's prayers were riding on his recovery – most of whom knew him only by a name printed on the front cover of one of his books – but they were not the ones now sitting in the waiting room preparing themselves for the anxious wait which lay ahead of them. As a heart surgeon Josh had already performed hundreds of operations – participating in both emergency and scheduled procedures. All kinds of people with all sorts of conditions had graced his table throughout the years since he'd qualified – he'd saved the lives of gunshot victims as well as those with chronic heart disease – and had even performed the current procedure a couple of times before.

He'd also lost patients – and he tried not to think about those people now. He had promised Castle that he was going to be alright, and he had every intention of keeping that promise.

The first incision was always the hardest – after that a surgeon's memory usually took over – and if it was an operation they had performed a number of times before past experience also played its part. Every body was different but as long as the procedure ran smoothly, without any unforeseen complications, most people made a full recovery.

Castle was strong – with the exception of the flu which had led to the pericarditis in the first place he was in good health. There was no reason to suggest that the procedure was going to be anything other than successful.

Josh took a deep breath – he closed his eyes and tried to channel his focus. He tried to forget who it was he was about to operate on, and about the woman in the waiting room who's whole future was now riding on this one man's recovery. If he was going to keep Castle's life safe over the course of the following couple of hours he had to focus on the job he had been trained to do.

He tried to focus on the smell of disinfectant, and antiseptic, and on the familiar sounds of the machines and monitors which surrounded him.

There was a reason why surgeons were not supposed to operate on the ones they loved – Richard Castle wasn't even a friend, they'd hardly even known each other well enough to be considered acquaintances, and still the sense of responsibility was unnerving.

The anaesthesiologist indicated to him that he was happy with the patient's breathing and that they were ready to begin.

Josh nodded.

"Scalpel…" He turned to the nurse who'd been assigned to handing him the equipment throughout the duration of the operation.

She handed him the implement. He took another moment to allow himself one last glance at Castle's pale face. He knew that he shouldn't, that he should try to remain detached, but he didn't think on this occasion it would hurt to remind himself of just what lay at stake if this went wrong.

He sighed, silently hoping that he would be able to keep his promise to Castle – and then he turned away from his face and made that first difficult incision.

Time passed by slowly for Josh after that – as it invariably had during almost every operation he'd ever been a part of – but he was well accustomed to dealing with the very particular brand of stress that surgery brought with it. The responsibility of knowing that you were holding one person's life quite literally in your hands was exhausting, and everything took twice as long when every decision a surgeon made had to be checked, double checked and triple checked against the encyclopaedia of knowledge acquired throughout many arduous years of medical school – all of which had to achieved in the space of a single nanosecond.

Castle's case wasn't quite as straightforward as they'd first predicted however – there was rather a lot more fluid around his heart than there had initially appeared on his chest X-rays, and they had to keep him under anaesthesia rather longer than they'd planned in order to drain it. The anaesthesiologist had to increase his dose of the anaesthetic, and this put significantly more strain on his infected heart.

Despite the concern of the surgical team Castle seemed to cope well with the additional drugs however. The infection was eventually drained and the chest tube inserted successfully. He'd remained stable despite the extra strain which had been placed upon his weakened body, and Josh was initially very pleased with his progress.

He was just about to close him up when the anaesthesiologist detected a problem with his breathing – the first indication that Castle was in any sort of distress.

"He's blood pressure's dropping." A young nurse - who'd been monitoring his stats throughout the procedure - reported to Josh from one corner of the table. He looked up at the heart monitors – he was bradychardic.

"Shit! Come on Castle." Josh sighed, checking the wound for any sign of what had caused the sudden deterioration in his condition – there was none. "Stay with me. Don't do this now."

He was not bleeding internally – there had to be another reason for the arrhythmia.

Castle's blood pressure continued to drop.

"Come on Castle. Come on Castle!" He tried, without success, to get his heart to respond to manual stimulation.

"Get me one cc of adrenaline and have the crash cart ready on standby in case we need to shock him!" He demanded. "We are not going to lose him!"

Josh had made a promise, and he was going to keep it.

He would not forever more be known as the man who failed to save Richard Castle.


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter 13**

When Josh walked away from theatre that afternoon, peeling his bloodied scrubs away from his sweaty skin and tossing them into the designated bins provided on the way out, he could think of nothing more appealing now than climbing into the communal shower and allowing the water to wash away the perceived grime acquired throughout the three hour procedure – but he couldn't, at least not yet anyway – there was something he needed to do first.

If only hot, soapy water could do the same for emotional baggage as it could for the sweat and dirt, he thought, as he headed in the direction of the relatives waiting room – where he knew that Kate and Castle's mother and daughter were waiting for news.

He breathed in crisp, refreshing air – drinking it in as though it were water sent to quench a parched tongue on a hit day. It was much cooler out here than it had been in the operating theatre - it helped to clear his mind a little.

His heart felt heavy as it invariably always did after surgery – no matter what the outcome. He tried not to let insecurity creep in, and to push all of his nagging, unhelpful doubts to the back of his mind.

Could he have done better? He asked himself. Could he have done more? Could he have done anything differently?

But instead he had to tell himself that they'd all done the best they could. He was not a maker of miracles, a scalpel was not akin to a magic wand, and there was only so much one man could do – some lives were saved, and inevitably some lives were lost. It wasn't his fault – that was the first thing they'd taught him in medical school – sometimes no matter how hard you tried it would never be enough to save a person's life. But he shouldn't have made promises he couldn't guarantee to keep.

He stopped when he saw Kate through the window in the waiting room door – she'd obviously been crying – and he paused for a moment as he formulated in his mind what he was going to say. Inevitably everyone she loved seemed to leave her in the end – her mother, Royce, Captain Montgomery… Castle.

She and Martha were holding hands, and Alexis was standing by the small window starring out at a world she no longer felt a part of – looking but still not really seeing. So many people seemed trapped in limbo here.

Josh sighed.

There were some things he really hated about his job… and then there were the things he loved.

Today was one of those good days, and he smiled.

All three turned to look up expectantly at him as he entered.

"He's out of surgery." He explained, and watched as they noticeably relaxed when he told them the news. "Things went as well as could be expected. There were a few complications but we've managed to stabilise him and he's comfortable now. The first signs are good." He reassured them.

Kate frowned. "Wait, complications? What do you mean complications?" She asked him.

She was understandably concerned to hear that the procedure hadn't gone quite as smoothly as they'd initially expected it to. But Josh was as confident as he could be that what had happened to Castle in the operating theatre had been a reaction to the extra anaesthetic they'd had to give him and now that he was in recovery it was very unlikely to happen again.

"When we opened him up we found quite a lot more fluid compressing his heart than we were initially expecting." He told them. "We've managed to expectorate most of it ourselves during the surgery, and the chest tube, which was inserted successfully, should drain away the rest of it over the next few days. He did however experience an arrhythmia." He explained.

His mother looked worried.

"Is that bad?" Martha asked.

"It's not uncommon for a patient to experience some form of abnormal heart rhythm during heart surgery." He told her. "But we also had some trouble stabilising his blood pressure so things were a little touch and go for a while. We managed to stop him going into cardiac arrest, but we're going to keep a very close eye on him for the next few days."

Her hand immediately went to her mouth nervously as he said this, a small exclamation of shock escaping her, but she nodded. Alexis reached out to take her grandmother's other hand anxiously, but instead Martha pulled her into a hug. Her granddaughter's arms wrapped themselves tightly around her, instinctively searching for some solid resemblance of comfort to cling onto. In that moment her grandmother was her solid ground, whilst her dad would always be the North Star that she had once spoken about in her graduation speech – and he would always shine her the safest route home.

"Can we see him?" Kate asked.

"He's in recovery at the moment but I'll let you know as soon as they transfer him to the ICU." Josh nodded.

"Thank you." She smiled at him. "For everything."

As he turned to leave however, Martha, who'd now managed to disentangle herself from Alexis' embrace caught him by the arm and pulled him aside. She aimed an anxious sideways glance at her granddaughter.

"Josh," She spoke in a hushed tone, as though she didn't want to be overheard, "I hate to ask this of you after everything you've done, but do you think you could have a word with Alexis please?" She asked him. "She's incredibly close to her father, and she's taking all this rather hard. She's such a smart girl though, and I think if you were to explain things to her…"

"It's ok…" Josh nodded, quite understanding her meaning and what it was she was asking him to do. He'd seen enough of Alexis now to realise that she was obviously a very intelligent, but incredibly sensitive young woman – and it wasn't the first time a concerned relative had asked him to explain a patient's medical condition to a frightened loved one, who wasn't as well versed in medical knowledge as he was.

"I understand." He smiled. "When I've got a minute I'll see what I can do."


	14. Chapter 14

**Chapter 14**

It was a huge shock to the system seeing Castle hooked up to IV's and a heart monitor in the ICU – especially for Alexis and Martha. They had done their best to prepare themselves but nothing they could have possibly imagined could have prepared them for quite how sick he looked. His face was a mask of eggshell white and there as a glimmer of perspiration on his forehead like a sheen of varnish on canvas.

Martha had always thought that if anything her son would probably take a bullet – that his body could be so completely devastated by the flu didn't make sense to her, despite the fact that Josh had told her that although rare it did sometimes happen.

He had explained to them that he hadn't fully woken up yet – but that his body was now free of the anaesthetic. As promised he had allowed them to see him as soon as he'd been moved up to the ICU – but had said that he could only permit them to stay for a few minutes.

Castle was weak – the arrhythmia had weakened his heart even further. He was still under sedation and on very strong pain killers.

He was pale due to the blood loss during surgery, his blood pressure was still low but no longer dangerously so, and they had him on medication to stabilise that.

All of the wires, the drugs, the monitors, were fairly standard after a major procedure such as the one Castle had just been through – and the chest tube usually seemed particularly shocking to relatives seeing it for the very first time – but it all looked a lot worse than it really was.

Even so Josh couldn't help but notice that whilst Kate and Martha moved a little closer to the edge of the bed, adjusting to the sight of the monitors and growing in confidence in their presence – Alexis held back.

She looked confused – as though unsure whether her father was really as fragile as he looked or whether the IV's feeding drugs and fluids into his body and the wires transmitting information out were all as normal as Josh had assured them they were. She had never seen anyone in her life before who looked quite as sick as her father did now. She wanted to reach out and touch him – to hold him – but only if she wasn't going to hurt him by doing so.

"Hey sweetheart." Kate smiled, reaching down and kissing Castle gently on the top of his head whilst Martha took him by the hand. His fingers were cold and she instinctively rubbed them between hers to try and encourage the circulation. They were using extra blankets to try and keep him warm but it would be another few hours before his body temperature returned to normal.

"You can touch him, you know." He told Alexis reassuringly, remembering his promise to Martha earlier that afternoon. "He's not going to break. It might even help him." He smiled.

"He looks so weak." She frowned.

"That's because he is." Josh explained to her. "Surgery is hugely traumatic on the body, but you know Alexis, just because your father is very poorly, that doesn't mean he isn't going to get better." He told her.

She looked at him and as he watched her the young woman took a step closer to Castle's bedside – testing the water, making sure that if she moved in closer to him he wasn't going to shatter into a hundred tiny pieces. She seemed encouraged by Josh's words but still a little unsure.

Her father was the strongest man she knew, he was her rock and the glue which held her family together. He was her best friend, the biggest kid in the class, the one who put a fresh, new spin on her irrational fears, the one who made her smile when she was sad, and laugh when she wanted to cry, and the giver of the best hugs in the world.

He was the one she went to for advice – to vent, and to celebrate. He'd been the one trailing behind her growing up, ready to catch her fall – giving her the confidence to spread her wings and the freedom to explore so much of the world around her in order that she may grow.

She may have been an adult now and shaping up to be a responsible young woman with dreams and ambitions and a life of her own, but where her relationship with her father was concerned she would always be his little girl – and it wouldn't matter how old she got, she'd never be ready to face the thought of her life without him.

"I want to help him." She told Josh anxiously.

"You can." He nodded.

"But how?" She asked him.

"By just letting him know that you're here." He told her. "Hold his hand, talk to him. He's still out of it at the moment but when he comes round he's going to be confused and he's going to be disorientated. He'll need someone familiar, and something comforting to focus on to get him though the next few difficult hours. He needs someone who'll take his mind off the pain."

Alexis sighed, never once taking her eyes off her father's frozen form. He'd been there for her her whole life – he'd been the one who'd read her the bedtime stories and tucked her in safe and sound at night, he'd never once forgotten to search the cupboards or under the bed for monsters, he'd been the one to stay home with her all day when she'd been sick, and the first to deal out the ice cream, he'd never failed to offer to help her with her homework even long after he'd ceased to know the answers, and he'd never once missed a single school play or parents evening.

She smiled – reaching out a tentative hand to touch her father on the leg – a single tear tracing a silvery line down her pale cheek.

She'd never thought about it before but he'd spent the past eighteen years being strong for her – perhaps, she thought, it was now her turn to be strong for him.


	15. Chapter 15

**Chapter 15**

The first thing Josh did upon starting shift early the next morning was to check in on Castle. The night nurses reported that he had had a comfortable night's sleep but that he was showing signs of being in some pain this morning – apparently he had also refused the pain medication they had offered him.

Josh sighed – from what he'd heard about him that certainly sounded like Castle – and he headed off in the direction of his room to check on himbefore making a start on his morning rounds.

The lights were still dimmed from the night before and so when he entered he couldn't see him immediately through the gloom, but as a doctor he didn't need to when he could hear his shallow and laboured breathing and see the subtle but obvious indications of his distress on the heart monitor. Castle let out a groan and he made his way quickly over. His skin was pale and clammy and his body had gone rigid with the pain he was evidently in.

"What have I told you about trying to play superman?" He exclaimed, immediately increasing the dosage setting on his pain medication pump – which he noted had been turned off – and taking the stethoscope from around his neck. He placed the bell to Castle's chest, listening to his heart and lungs.

"I wasn't." Castle groaned.

"Then what's all this in aid of then, if not to try and prove that you're some kind of super human being?" Josh asked.

Castle's heartrate was fast and erratic but that wasn't wholly unexpected given the circumstances. Mercifully the medication started to take effect very soon after it entered his bloodstream and as his pain started to ease he began to noticeably relax and his laboured respirations evened out.

Castle drew a shaky breath – and the room was silent for a moment as he lay with his eyes closed and jaw clenched. Josh kept a close eye on him, watching as he seemed to be trying to force himself to relax – but when he'd finally recovered sufficiently enough to be able to talk he responded. He felt the need to justify his decision to have the pump turned off.

"I didn't like the way it was making he feel." He said.

"You've just had major heart surgery Castle." Josh sighed. "You don't have to like it, but you do need to take it if you want to avoid excruciating pain."

"It made me feel nauseas." Castle explained, his voice still somewhat strained but the medication already beginning to make him slur his words as it anaesthetised his senses. He still seemed to be in some pain but after a few minutes more he stopped writhing and lay back in the bed – still.

He looked exhausted – swallowing hard as though to back up what he had just said.

Josh nodded – nausea was a well-documented side effect of the pain medication he was on, but they could do something to help him with that.

"I'll get the nurse to give you something to help relieve the nausea." He told him, making a note of the new medication on Castle's medical chart, before looking up at him, expression set serious, and eyebrows raised. "But that stays on!" He insisted, pointing at the pump.

Castle looked back at him. He sighed, but nodded.

"Are you always this difficult?" Josh smiled.

"I don't know." Castle shrugged. His eyelids were beginning to drop and his head lolled to one side as the medication began to make him feel drowsy. "Are you always this…" He struggled to pluck a word out of mid-air through the haze of sleep which threatened, "doctery?" He finally settled on.

Josh laughed. "Touché!"

He then proceeded to make a start on performing his routine checks whilst Castle watched him make a note of his heartrate, pulse, blood pressure, and blood oxygen levels. He checked the chest tube and the wound for signs of infection. There was something preying upon Castle's mind however which he was struggling with the prospect of getting off his chest. There was something he needed to say but he didn't know how to go about saying it or how well it would be received. As he watched Josh work however – grateful for how carefully and gently he went about his duties – his conscience won over his male pride.

He cleared his throat.

"Josh, I just wanted to thank you." He faltered awkwardly, adjusting his position in the bed with some difficulty.

Josh looked up at him as he said this, seemingly surprised, and Castle swallowed hard – his tongue sticky and his mouth dry.

"I used to think that you hated me," he explained, "but no one could hate someone that they've done as much for as you've done for me."

"I never hated you Castle." Josh shook his head. He adjusted Castle's drip, causing him to flinch as the line pulled on the needle in the back of his hand. He looked at him apologetically but Castle indicated to him that he was alright, and once seemingly satisfied with the alterations he'd made Josh took a step back.

"I was jealous of you," He confessed, "and it was easier for me to blame you for what happened when Kate got shot than to accept that it was just one of those things that no one could have prevented. I know you did everything you could."

Castle grimaced at the reminder of an incident which still plagued him to this day, during which he had very nearly lost the woman he loved. Despite how many years had now gone by it still troubled him to think how very different his life would now be if things had ended as it had then seemed they might – it had been something he'd had to push to the back of his mind, just as Kate herself had done, in order to go back to work and feel able to get on with living his life, but he knew he would never forget that awful day and he would go to his grave with the memory of seeing her lying on the ground in front of him branded into his heart.

"You were right though." He sighed sadly. "I've never really forgiven myself for letting that happen to her."

"No I wasn't Castle." Josh exclaimed. He frowned, seemingly surprised that Castle still seemed to be blaming himself for what had happened after all this time. "It was wrong of me to blame you." He said. "Don't you see?" He asked. "I was selfish. I just wanted to keep her with me as long as possible. I knew her job was dangerous and I was so afraid of losing her, but I ended up losing her anyway. You pushed her to find out what happened to her mother so that she could get on with living the rest of her life. You were the one who broke down those walls. I could never have done that."

"I never meant to come between the two of you Josh." Castle told him. He was still taking shallow breaths and talking was increasing the effort it was taking him to breathe. Josh took the oxygen mask which was hanging up at the side of his bed and, looping it over his head, placed it over his mouth and nose. Castle breathed the gas gratefully.

"I know that now." Josh assured him, watching as some of the colour began to return to Castle's face and the stats on the monitor beside his bed began to improve as his blood oxygen levels stabilised. "But the thing is," he said, "if something's meant to be you can only hold it off for so long. I'm happy now. I'm engaged. We're expecting our first baby." He revealed.

"You're going to be a father?" Castle smiled – his words muffled by the oxygen mask. "Congratulations."

"Thank you." Josh smiled.

As he watched him Castle began to fidget uncomfortably and made a move as though he was going to remove the mask from his face, but Josh quickly reached out a hand to stop him.

"No, leave that on for a while." He advised him. "Your stats are showing that you need it."

Tired eyes looked back at him. He was too weary to argue and so Castle relented. The drugs were by now beginning to have a profound effect on his body. His eyes were beginning to close, and he slowly began to relax as he sunk down into the bed. He still couldn't completely give himself over to sleep it seemed however, every small movement which jostled the chest tube caused him to wince and to go rigid with the pain this sent ricocheting through his ribs.

"Castle, I know you're tired," Josh said, "but I need to know, are you still in pain?"

"Yeah." He nodded.

"I know the chest tube is uncomfortable, but is the pressure in your chest any better or still about the same as it was before the surgery?" He asked.

"A little better I think." Castle said.

"Well that's good." Josh nodded – they'd already drained nearly a pint of fluid away from his chest cavity in the night but any improvement in the way he was feeling was a sign that the surgery had been a success.

"You need to get some rest." He told him. "Something tells me you won't get much chance for it when your family arrive later."

Castle laughed. "My mother can be quite a handful sometimes can't she?" He asked weakly.

"Actually your mother held up rather well. I'm afraid Alexis got a little upset though." Josh told him.

"Alexis?" Castle frowned, his eyes immediately shooting open with the mention of his daughter's name.

"She's fine." Josh assured him, placing two gentle hands to Castle's shoulders in order to lower him back down onto the bed as he tried to sit up. "Your mother asked me to have a word with her. I think I managed to pacify some of her fears. She's a smart young woman."

"I know." Castle nodded. He lay back against the pillows and smiled as he thought about his beautiful, intelligent, strong, and responsible daughter. She made him so proud. He would go through the worst physical pain imaginable in order to protect her. He would do anything to keep his little girl safe.

But in that moment he realised that he didn't need to do anything brave, or dangerous, or physically reckless, the only thing she really needed was a cuddle from her dad, and he thought a father-daughter hug was exactly what he needed too right now.

He couldn't think of any better medicine for a parent in the hospital than a visit from their child - no matter how old that child was.

"Thank you Josh." He sighed, as the doctor finally finished filling out the relevant sections of Castle's medical chart, and turned to leave him alone for a while. "For everything." He added.

Josh stopped in the doorway, turning around to look at the man who appeared a lot more relaxed now than he had when he'd first walked in on him that morning.

He sighed.

"Don't mention it. I was just doing my job." He only half smiled, and he closed the door behind him.

Castle was asleep within minutes of him leaving the room.


	16. Chapter 16

**Chapter 16**

"Richard, are you alright?" Martha frowned, observing her son noticeably blanch – his ghostly white face morphing to grey.

"It's nothing mom." Castle took a deep breath, pausing before he responded as though uncomfortable. He fidgeted in the bed, changing position several times – although careful to avoid knocking the chest tube – before trying to sit up. He clutched at his stomach with one hand, whilst the other moved quickly upwards towards his mouth. "I just feel a little sick that's all."

"Do you want me to call Josh?" She asked him.

Castle swallowed – hard – and shook his head.

"No, it's alright." He breathed. "He's going to get the nurses to give me something for it."

He felt Kate's hand slip into his. Her fingers gently traced the contours of bandages around his chest, and he flinched away – the wound was still sore, the stitches hadn't yet coaxed the two severed flaps of skin together and the newly formed scar tissue was still rich with exposed nerves and tender to the touch.

"I'm sorry." She apologised. "Does that hurt?" She asked him.

"No." He told her honestly. "It's just tender."

She felt his abdominal muscles relax and contract beneath her fingers and he swallowed hard several more times to try and calm the storm in his stomach.

"Sweetheart, just try to relax." She comforted – rubbing his back in a soothing circular motion. "Try to think of something else. Let's do something to take your mind off it." She suggested.

When Castle didn't immediately respond however she looked to Martha, who, knowing her son better than anyone, recognised what was about to happen as soon as Castle gagged – unable to hold back the storm any longer. She grabbed the sick bowel Josh had left for him on the bedside cabinet just in time – holding it out for him to take and guiding his head towards it as he vomited violently into the basin.

Every spasm of his diaphragm caused his ribs to contract around the chest tube and made him whimper. He was in too much pain to think of much else than getting through the next few miserable cramps in his stomach – it was embarrassing, and disgusting, and oh so degrading.

He was relieved that Alexis had afternoon classes – Martha had arranged to pick her up from college later that afternoon and bring her straight to the hospital – and therefore she was not around to witness this.

Kate pressed the panic button above his bed, which brought a nurse running – and she in turn had someone page Josh, who arrived a few minutes later.

There was nothing left for him to bring up, and yet he continued to dry heave bile into the bowel. Josh's first priority was to check the position of the chest tube to make sure that it hadn't become dislodged – causing more internal damage – and then, finding nothing out of place, he turned his attention to settling the contractions of Castle's stomach.

He put a reassuring hand upon his shoulder, but seeing that Castle would be unable to respond he turned to his mother instead.

"How long's he been like this?" He asked her.

"I don't know," Martha told him, "he started feeling queasy about an hour ago but he's only just started vomiting."

"Did you give him the Dolasetron I told you to?" He asked, turning to the nurse.

"I was just about to." She told him. "I'm afraid I've only recently come on duty. I noticed the note on his medical chart, but that he hadn't yet been given it." She tried to explain.

"Just about to!" Josh exclaimed, taking the syringe from her. "I wrote that note up hours ago!"

He double checked the dosage in the hypodermic and injected it himself into Castle's cannula. Satisfied that he had finished being sick for now he then handed the used sick bowel to the nurse before pressing a new one into Castle's hands, just to be on the safe side.

"I am going to get to the bottom of this!" Josh warned the young woman as she turned to leave – the bowel and its unpleasant contents in hand. "Someone is going to be held accountable for this!" He told her. Martha noticed that the woman, who didn't look much older than Alexis, glance back nervously at Josh as she left the room. Her heart went out to her - it wasn't her fault after all.

Kate then helped Castle sit back in bed, whilst his mother plumped the pillows and rubbed his back soothingly in the way she had once done when he'd been a little boy. Kate thought it was sweet, and if the situation hadn't been quite so serious she could have almost envisaged her launching into a bedtime story as she tenderly stroked her son's hair away from his pale face.

"How are you feeling now?" Josh asked him.

"Well, I think I've finished throwing up for now." Castle swallowed – grimacing grimly at the bitter taste of the bile in his mouth. "But my chest hurts a little." He told him.

"Here, let me have a listen." Josh said, helping him to lean forward and feeding the stethoscope carefully beneath the hospital gown. As his hand brushed against Castle's wound he could feel the heat of the inflammation radiating from it. Castle grimaced, and Martha squeezed his hand.

"Well, there doesn't appear to be any serious damage done." Josh concluded with some relief once he was reasonably enough assured that both Castle's heart and lungs sounded as normal as could be expected under the circumstances. "We'll keep a close eye on you for the next twenty-four hours or so though just to be on the safe side, and let me know if the pain gets any worse or you begin to experience any difficulty breathing."

Castle nodded.

"Thank you." He swallowed, and Martha too smiled her thanks.

"The medication I've given you should begin the ease the nausea soon." He told them. "But get the nurses to page me if it doesn't or you begin to feel worse. I'll be back to check on you again later."

He turned to leave, but as he did Martha got up from her seat beside her son's bed and made her way over to him. He felt her hand gently brush against his arm and turned around to face her.

"Saying 'thank you' seems rather a cliché given the circumstances." She told him. "But I want you to know that we really do mean it Josh." She smiled. "I know you and my son haven't always seen eye to eye and you've had your differences over the years. It can't be easy for you seeing Kate and Richard together after everything that happened between the two of you."

"That was all a very long time ago Martha." Josh smiled and shook his head. "We've all moved on a long way since then. I'm happy now, and I'm happy to see them happy."

"Even so," She said, "Richard is my only child. There are no words to describe how grateful I am to you for everything you've done for him."

"There's no need." He assured her. "It's my job."

"I just wanted to say thank you." She looked at him, and as she said this Josh noticed the tears in her eyes – tears which he suspected she'd been fighting for days, not wanting her son to see. A single one spilled over a solitary eyelid and trickled down her lightly powdered cheek, and she swiped it away quickly.

She squeezed his hand tenderly and smiled as Josh returned the gesture. He didn't know why he did, when Kate had left him he didn't think he'd ever have anything to do with her, or Castle, or the rest of his family ever again – and at the time that would have suited him fine. But he hadn't been lying to Martha when he'd said that that had all been a very long time ago, and when he'd seen the two of them again he'd been surprised to discover that Kate's memory didn't hurt anymore. Upon realising that the two of them hadn't only remained partners but were now also engaged to be married he really hadn't cared, and he really had meant it when he'd told Martha that he was contented to see them both happy. He wasn't sure whether they could ever get back to a point where they could at least be friends again, but not because of what had happened between the two of them – people changed, and they hadn't seen each other in nearly three years. He wasn't sure whether there was room for any of them in each other's lives anymore. Sometimes it was best to leave the past where it belonged, in the past.

Still, it was nice to be able to put any lingering flickers of resentment behind him, to lay at least some of his demons to rest – and for Kate and Castle to do the same.

"You're welcome." He smiled.


	17. Chapter 17

**Chapter 17**

"Well you look good." Laine smiled as she approached Castle's bedside a few days later, arms laden with two shopping bags full of presents and a large and very expensive looking bouquet of flowers in one hand. Kate, who was lying in the bed beside Castle when she walked in – her head nestled into him and her hand resting lightly upon his chest – sat up and smiled as she entered, and Castle's face too appeared to light up at the sight of her. He was still on oxygen and the drip, but the chest tube had been removed the day before, and Kate – who'd been keeping all but Martha and Alexis away whilst he'd been so ill – had finally given Laine, Ryan and Esposito the all clear to visit him. She disentangled herself from his embrace and got to her feet, before helping Castle to sit up carefully.

"Well, I suppose I should be grateful hearing that coming from you." He chuckled – a gesture which was now surprisingly pain free. "You working with dead bodies for a living and all…"

"It's great to see you." She smiled, placing the presents down at the foot of his bed as she leaned in to hug him with surprising tenderness – sometimes it was easy to forget that she had actually once trained as a doctor herself and she still had an enormous amount of compassion for someone who's patients were beyond any sadness she may have felt for them. "After what Kate's been saying I wasn't too sure of what I would find when I came here today." She explained.

"He's doing much better now." Kate nodded, and smiled as she leaned into the hug Laine pulled her into after she'd finished cradling Castle. "Thank you for coming Laine." She whispered in the young woman's ear as she rested her head gently upon her shoulder.

"Are you kidding me girl?" Laine asked – holding Kate twice as tightly to make up for the lack of squeeze she'd been able to give Castle – who was still very sore and tender from the surgery. "I'd have come earlier if you'd have let me."

"I know." Kate nodded, and smiled at her appreciatively. "It's just that he wasn't up to receiving visitors until now." She told her. "The first few days we were here were really difficult. He was so sick, and in so much pain. He really needed to rest. You know what he's like, he would have put on a front for you, and I didn't want him to feel as though he had to do that." She explained.

"I know." Laine nodded in understanding. "It's alright, you don't have to explain."

It was only when she pulled away from her friend's embrace that she noticed the tears threatening to spill from Kate's eyes as she turned to look down at the man in the bed before her, before surreptitiously blinking them away.

She sighed – the breath shuddering in her chest as she sucked it in in one massive gulp as she turned back to look at her friend.

"You should have seen him though Laine," She hiccoughed quietly, sniffing to stifle a sob, and rubbing at her moist eyes – she hadn't cried in Castle's presence yet, and she wasn't about to start now. "I thought I was going to lose him." She whispered out of ear shot of her lover.

"Oh, hunny, come here." Laine simpered as she pulled her friend into another embrace. The two women stood, wrapped in each other's arms for a moment, leaving Castle to watch them from the side lines. Some men would have been left to wonder why it was that women always seemed to feel the need to hug each other at times like this – but not Castle. He instead felt left out, and only sory that he was still too sore for a proper cuddle at the moment.

He tactfully gave the two women their moment – he realised that she was trying not to show it, but he knew that Kate had been trying very hard not to cry in front of him for days now, and he thought it would probably do her some good to be able to hold someone who wasn't going to flinch away from her as soon as she began to apply even the smallest amount of pressure – and he watched her proceed to squeeze the life out of Laine. Her face was turned away from his, and he knew that she would be taking this opportunity to wipe away the tears he'd just noticed in her eyes.

"Are those for me?" He asked Laine once the two women had finally separated, indicating the two bags of presents and cards at the end of his bed – and Laine smiled at the childlike wonder in his eyes.

"We had a whip-around." She told him, and perched herself down on the edge of his bed so that she could pass him each of the neatly wrapped parcels one by one, whilst Kate went to stand at the head of the bed – her hand instinctively reaching out to stroke his floppy locks tenderly. "The flowers are from Gates." She explained.

Castle's eyes widened as he admired the very large and very expensive looking bouquet sandwiched between the two large shopping bags to stop it rolling off the bed. He whistled.

"Wow! I should get sick more often." He smiled.

"Yeah well, don't go making a habit of it." Line laughed. "I don't think any of us could cope with another week like the last one. By the way Ryan and Esposito asked if you could open theirs last." She added.

"What is it?" He asked her hopefully.

"I honestly couldn't say." Laine shrugged, shaking her head cluelessly. "They wouldn't tell me."

"Is it a lightsabre?" Castle's voice increased a couple of octaves with expectation and excitement, but Laine fixed him with a serious glare – her eyebrows raised reproachfully – and Castle shrunk back down onto the bed.

She wouldn't have told him what the two men had brought him even if she'd known – that would have spoiled the surprise – but she'd been telling the truth when she'd told him that neither Esposito nor Ryan had let her into the secret of what they had brought for their friend – although it hadn't been for want of her trying to glean the information from them. All she knew was that it was something very large and very bulky and had taken up the entire back seat of her car. So large was it that she'd had to leave it there – resolving to go back and grab it later.

"I think they wanted to be here themselves to watch you open it, but they had to work overtime." She told him.

Castle smiled.

"Well, by the time I get through opening his lot it may well give them time to get here." He jested.

"I'll just ask the nurses for a vase for these flowers." Kate offered. "Do you think you'll be alright with him for a moment?" She asked Laine – who nodded.

"I'm not a child!" Castle feigned offence at her choice of phrase.

"Then what would you be wanting with a lightsabre?" Kate chuckled as she bent down to kiss him hard upon the lips – and he returned the gesture as best he could. He was still weak, but as he leaned into her mouth Kate was relieved that his kiss was already a lot stronger than it had been a few days before.

Laine watched him as he then watched her leave – taking the flowers with her – and when Kate had left the room she looked Castle over more critically, observing him now through the eyes of the doctor.

"So, how are you feeling?" She asked him, smoothing the blankets out in front of him so that she could place one of the carefully wrapped gifts down on his lap. "That one's from me by the way." She told him as she watched him undo the ribbon before beginning to prise the tape away from the paper with an uncommon amount of care. After everything he'd been through Laine had almost been expecting him to tear into the presents, and nobody could have blamed him if he had, but to her surprise he instead appeared to be taking his time over them – savouring the moment that he pulled back the wrapping on each and every one.

"Thanks." He smiled at her. "I'm still a bit sore." He confessed in answer to her question. "I still feel a little weak, and my chest still hurts when I breathe, but Josh said it'll take a while for the swelling and inflammation to go down, and compared to how I felt a few days ago I'm doing a lot better." He told her.

"It'll be a while before you're able to come back to work." Laine agreed. "You know, I can't understand why Kate didn't tell me you were so ill though," She thought, "and why she didn't call an ambulance as soon as you began experiencing chest pains. She should have known better – it's not like her. I mean, I've been wracking my brains trying to figure out what made her call Josh after all this time, when she didn't even know that he was back in New York."

"To be honest with you Laine," Castle sighed with the air of a man who'd been somewhat troubled by the same thought, and the action caused him to immediately grimace, "there was, at the time, a very small part of me that wondered the same thing too," he told her, "but then I realised that it really didn't matter – that jealously and self-doubt shouldn't matter when you trust someone as much as I trust Kate. Being sick – and I do realise just how very sick I was Laine," he explained, "made me think very hard about what was most important to me in my life. It was more than just random circumstance which brought both Kate and I together," he smiled, "it was fate. I wished for something different that night, something better, something exciting and out of the norm to shake up the tedious monotony which awaited me. I had just killed off one of my best loved characters, and there was a very large part of me which thought I might not ever write again, and then Beckett tapped me on the shoulder. She strolled casually into my life, and then she changed it for the better, and I genuinely believe that we were meant to be together." He smiled.

Laine mirrored his gesture. If there were two people absolutely made for each other it was Castle and Beckett, she thought to herself fondly.

"She didn't let you know how sick I was because I didn't tell her." He continued. "I kept the chest pains to myself for days – I thought it was just a cold, and that's what I told her. As for why she called Josh instead of an ambulance I honestly couldn't say," he considered,"perhaps she did panic – but whatever the reason may be it really doesn't matter. In fact, if I'm honest, I'm kind of glad that she did." He explained. "Josh has been amazing throughout all of this, and I really don't think my recovery would have been quite as quick as it has been if he hadn't been so on the ball."

Castle finally finished tearing back the final layer of paper from her gift – which had obviously been wrapped with the intention of prolonging the time it took the recipient to open it – and he grinned.

"Battlestar Galactica – The Complete Collection." He looked across at her. "Thanks, I don't have this one."

"I know." Laine smiled. "Kate let me sneak a peek at your DVD collection when I was over at the loft the other evening. I thought you might appreciate something a little different to keep you going throughout all the hours of rest and recuperation you've got to look forward to."

"Please, don't remind me." Castle asked of her – it pained him to think of just how long it would be before he would be allowed to return to work at the precinct again – especially as this time even he wasn't stupid enough to consider taking anymore unnecessary risks with his health. Where the heart was concerned you couldn't afford to take chances, and he had already promised Kate that he would listen to everything the doctors told him to do and serve out his recuperation period at home, no matter how long it might take, or how bored he might get, and no matter how difficult that might prove to be.

"You know I used to watch this when I was a kid." He told her enthusiastically, indicating the large decorated box of DVD's in his hands. "I used to love it… I guess I just never got around to buying the boxset." He thought.

"I'm glad you like it." She told him.

Castle then looked down at the dozens of other presents she'd already begun to remove from the bags – arranging them upon the bed before him – and he wondered with a growing lump in his throat which one he should choose to open next.

"You know Laine," He sighed, and she looked up at him as she detected the break in his voice. She reached across to squeeze his leg reassuringly beneath the sheets – realising the cause of this unexpected upsurge of emotion and the reason why he appeared so suddenly overcome as she followed his gaze to where it fell upon the blanket of neatly wrapped parcels laid out before him, "I really don't know what to say to all this…"

"Why do you have to say anything?" She asked him. "It's just people's way of showing you how much you mean to them."

"I know." Castle swallowed hard. "I'm just so touched." He told her. "I had no idea how much you all cared."

"Oh, baby!" Laine smiled as she watched a single tear drop from Castle's eye, skimming his pale cheek, and splash down into his lap – she realised that his tears weren't born solely of indulgent sentimentalism. He too had spent days trying not to cry in front of Kate, and seeing all the presents and cards – each one merely a physical representation of people's love for him – had proven to be just a little too much so soon after the surgery.

"It's been tough on you both, I know." She soothed, drawing him back into a gentle embrace. She felt him rest his head upon her shoulder. "But the worst is over, and what you need to focus on now is getting better." She reassured him, rubbing his back soothingly.

Castle nodded, and Laine sighed – surprised that the man seemed genuinely not to have realised before how much he meant to them all. Even Gates, who would never have admitted it, had been deeply shaken when news of how ill he was had filtered down to her.

Men really were clueless she thought to herself with a vague sense of amusement – and resolved to let him know a little more blatantly just how much he meant to her from now on.


	18. Chapter 18

**Chapter 18**

 **Hey all my lovely readers! I don't normally do author notes anymore but I felt that I needed to for this one! I just wanted to apologise to you all for the incredibly long gap between updates to this story! As you can see I never intended to abandon it, but I have been incredibly busy lately and it has been hard to find the time to write! On top of all that although I have always known where I was going with this I have found it very difficult to write this chapter! Finally, I have finished though, and there is only one more chapter left now - which you will probably be relieved to hear I have already written - so that long wait is officially finally over! I will post the final chapter very soon! Thank you to all those people who have messaged me over the past few months, asking about updates, and let me know that they have not given up on this story - because you didn't neither did I! I hope you enjoy! Elf!**

Castle flinched as Josh carefully peeled away the sterile dressing covering the still raw surgical scar, and began to gently palpate the area surrounding the pink tissue. There was no sign of infection having taken hold within or around the sight of the wound, although the exposed nerves still caused him pain when Josh pressed down with his fingers. Josh looked up at his patient as he felt Castle's rib muscles tense beneath his touch.

"Sorry." He apologised. "That still feels quite tender then?" He asked.

"A little." Castle nodded, and Kate squeezed his hand.

"Heart surgery hurts, hey babe?" She smiled sadly as she reached up to brush a few stray strands of unbrushed hair away from his forehead, and looked up at Josh, who averted her gaze uncomfortably. It was rather clear that the memory of her shooting was still a difficult subject, and not just for herself and Castle.

Josh made his way around to the foot of the bed, making a note of something on Castle's medical chart, before returning to examine and adjust the man's IV's. He was still pale, and on the few occasions that he had been able to get out of bed without experiencing any pain, and therefore his progress had not been hampered by his discomfort, it had been clear that he was still weak – although he appeared more like his usual self everyday, and seemed a lot happier now that the chest tube had been removed. It had still only been a little over a week since his operation though, and Josh knew that despite Castle's evident frustrations it would be a while before he was back on his feet again.

Rick had been nothing short of a model patient – he'd done everything the doctor's had told him and he'd accepted and worked with the pain rather than against it – but whilst his physical condition continued to improve it was becoming increasingly apparent that he was rapidly growing bored with the enforced bedrest imposed upon him, and that he missed the comfort and familiarity of his own home.

Josh could read the question he knew Castle had wanted to ask him for days within the man's tired eyes – before the words had even left his lips.

"Any idea when I might be able to go home?" He asked Josh when he'd finished adjusting his drips, making sure to order another bag of saline for when the current one was finished, and injecting morphine into his cannula.

The cardiologist sighed.

"Well, you're still in pain even with the morphine," He explained, "but it's going to take a while for your body to heal and for the inflammation to go down. You're due to complete your current course of anti-biotics tomorrow, and I'll review your case again then, but your recent bloodwork has shown that your white cell count is still high and I'd like to keep you in for a few more days yet. It may be that it takes another course of IV anti-biotics to get the underlying infection under control."

Castle looked disappointed at this news, but accepted it – just as he had done everything else since the onset of his illness – without complaint or protest. He nodded, resigning himself to at least another few days in the hospital.

"I'll be back to check on you later." Josh smiled, resting his hand reassuringly upon his patient's shoulder for a moment, and as Castle looked up at him he returned the gesture. Kate looked at the two men – remembering a time when any thought of amicable interaction between the two of them would have been met with resistance on both sides and would have seemed almost impossible. Neither had been backwards in coming forwards when it had come to the outward display of their dislike for each other, but there was no trace of their past hostilities in their interactions now. Josh's hand hovered uncertainly above her shoulder too as he turned to leave, but he quickly withdrew it and offered up a small smile instead. It was a gesture he hoped could be construed as friendly and comforting, but instead came across as forced. Over the past few days Kate had done everything she could to try and reach out to him, but he'd continued to keep his distance from her and in an ironic turn of circumstances whilst the two men seemed to be paving the way for a new and more agreeable relationship it was now Josh and Kate who's relationship seemed strained.

"Get one of the nurses to page me if you need me." He told her, and she just nodded silently as she watched him go.

She then sidled her way back over to her fiancée, reaching out her hand to touch him, and he took it and pulled her down into the bed beside him. Catching sight of the life-sized Darth Vader in the corner of the room, Kate adjusted her position accordingly until she was lying nose to nose with Castle. She had no idea what could have possessed Ryan and Esposito to buy their friend something so unnecessarily cumbersome and tacky, and had been even more surprised that the nurses had allowed it to remain a permanent fixture in his hospital room – even a light sabre would have been more preferable in her opinion, but Castle had seemed to like it and had promised to find space for it in his study so that she wouldn't have to see it when she visited or stayed over – and for that reason Kate had supposed that she would get used to it… eventually.

She smiled as she felt Castle's arms curl around her – cuddling had been difficult in the days leading up to his surgery, and almost impossible after but they'd both learnt that if Kate let Castle put his arms around her then they could still embrace, albeit gently. Now that the doctors had finally found the right combination of medication to manage his plan, holding each other wasn't so difficult, but Kate had found that she quite liked the feeling of her fiancée's arms around her, and his breath upon her face.

"Tell me," He asked her eventually, "I've been wondering, why was it that you decided to call Josh instead of calling an ambulance?"

He felt Kate's whole body stiffen beside his. She'd been dreading this question – not because she had anything to hide, because she did not – but no matter how hard they tried there could be no getting away from the fact that she and Josh had history. They'd both once harboured feelings for each other which had united them in a web of sexual attraction and love, and that very particular type of relationship between a man and a woman changed the way you felt about a person forever. She may have never felt as strongly for Josh as she now felt about Castle, but she still held him in very high regard, and she hadn't wanted her feelings for the man to cloud her relationship with him. Josh and Castle had made no secret in the past of their dislike for each other, and she'd been concerned that the two men's own tumultuous history might have clouded his judgement of the situation.

She'd known for weeks that Josh had been back in New York, after having spent over a year involved with relief aid abroad. She hadn't told Castle – she'd kept it a secret from him – how could she possibly tell him now without it causing misunderstanding between them?

At first she'd felt guilty about not saying anything – as though in some way she was being dishonest or disloyal to their new relationship – but knowing that Josh was back working in the city and having anything to do with him had been two different things. She'd told herself that if the moment seemed right then she might broach the subject with Castle, but as the weeks had passed that moment hadn't presented itself, and they'd both discovered more important things to occupy their thoughts and their time – like planning for their wedding.

She'd soon stopped thinking about Josh all together – any thoughts or ideas she might have initially had about getting back in touch, for old time's sake, had been pushed to the back of her mind – he wasn't a part of her life anymore. That had been the way she'd wanted it. Her shooting had made her revaluate her life, and in the weeks following the attempt upon her life she'd been surprised to discover that it hadn't been Josh she'd looked forward to visiting her – it had been Castle – and when she'd lay awake at night as sleep evaded her and the moonlight cast eerie shadows upon her wall it hadn't been Josh she'd thought about in her loneliness, and longed for, but had been Castle too. He'd always been there when she'd needed him – he'd always loved her – she'd just been too blind to see it before, or perhaps she'd just been living in denial because deep down, until now, she'd been too scared to acknowledge that she had feelings for him too.

"Kate?" Castle pressed her, and she suddenly realised that she hadn't yet answered his question – the silence between them made awkward and uncomfortable by her failure to respond. "What is it?" He frowned.

Kate sighed. She hadn't set out to deliberately deceive Castle – and she didn't want to further fuel any suspicions he might have that there was something going on between her and Josh.

"He lives at Cleveland Place." She said, disentangling herself from his embrace, and sitting up. She immediately felt the loss of his warm body beside hers, and the cold air whipped up around her – giving her goose bumps and making her shiver. She could feel his eyes upon her without even turning around to look at him, and it made her feel uncomfortable.

"That's just around the corner from us." He said – realisation dawning on him, and huffing and grunting as she felt the bed dip beside her as he too struggled to sit up.

"I know." She nodded.

"How do you know Kate?" He frowned.

It went without saying that whilst he'd initially been grateful to Josh for everything he'd done he was bound to have questioned Kate's motivation for calling him – if only fleetingly. A certain amount of jealousy would have been healthy – and perhaps only natural. She herself had never made a secret of hers when it came to Castle's relationship with his ex-wife, but he had never made a secret of the fact that the two of them were still friends.

Castle eventually managed to sit up and she felt the warmth of his hand as it hovered above her right shoulder. He didn't say anything, but simply sat – patiently waiting for her response. Still she didn't turn around to face him – too afraid to have to look him in the eyes and see what they revealed. The silence made it all the more difficult for Kate though as it meant that she was going to have to be the one to break it.

She felt Castle withdraw his hand from her, the air around where it had hovered becoming cold again, and she sighed. She wanted nothing more than to reach out and grab it before he withdrew it completely – to feel the warmth of his fingers as they intertwined with hers, and to caress them with her lips as they danced delicately across her face and he ran them through her hair. But that was not going to happen, not now, not at that moment.

The moment between them had passed.

"I was at the hospital a few weeks ago," She explained, finally, "interrogating a suspect as part of the Rodriguez case. One of the doctors there used to work with Josh and told me he was back in New York. He seemed surprised that I didn't already know until I reminded him that Josh and I hadn't seen each other in nearly three years." She told him.

"Then why didn't you tell me?" He implored her – to her surprise sounding more curious than hurt.

"There was no need." She shrugged. "He wasn't a part of our lives anymore, and… I thought it might dredge up painful memories…"

"So when you called Josh instead of calling an ambulance it was because…"

"Because I knew that he only lived a few blocks away." She finished his sentence for him. "Yes." She nodded. "Closer than the nearest hospital."

"I see." He sighed.

"Look Castle," Kate said, bracing herself for the onslaught she felt was bound to likely follow – a volcano of resentment and jealousy for which she would only have herself to blame – and trying to minimise the resultant fallout from her poor judgement. Perhaps she could salvage something from the mess she'd created. "I'm sorry. I know I should have told you." She insisted. "But I didn't want to make anything out of something which really wasn't that big a deal. There's nothing going on between us. I promise."

"I never thought there was." She felt a tender finger gently tickle her chin, and as the man she loved more than anyone else in the whole world slowly coaxed her face back to face his she noticed, for the first time, that he was actually smiling. There were tears in her own eyes and she swiped them away quickly – she had no reason to cry.

She frowned.

"You're not angry?" She asked him.

"Why would I be angry?" He smiled, confused by the young woman's strange behaviour – stroking her cheek tenderly with the back of his hand, and cupping her neck as he leaned in towards her – their foreheads coming gently together as his lips searched for hers. Kate found herself powerless to resist his touch, and relaxed into him, despite her well-meaning attempt to distance herself from him.

"I kept it from you though." She whispered into his shoulder. "I didn't tell you when I should have done. I just didn't want to risk anything coming between us again. I didn't want to lose you…"

"Wait, is that what all this is about?" He asked her, looking down into her rich chocolaty eyes, and Kate nodded. Castle sighed, and kissed her tenderly on the top of her head – drawing her body tightly into his as he did so. The action pulled on his stitches and his chest hurt where Kate was leaning with the full force of her slim frame into him – but he wasn't going to let her know that.

"I'm not going anywhere," He promised – hoping that it would be enough to reassure her, "and after everything we've been through, what we've had to overcome just to get to this point, I trust you. Of course I was curious, but it never once crossed my mind that there was anything going on between you and Josh. I love you."

'Well,' He thought to himself, 'this wasn't a total lie'. He'd meant what he'd said to Laine the day before – he really did trust Kate. Nothing else mattered anymore.

"I trusted Josh as a doctor." She told him. "I always have, and no matter what might have transpired between us, good or bad, I always will. I panicked Castle." She said, looking up at him as his thumb gently caressed her bottom lip, and her tears shimmered in her pearlescent eyes – she looked frightened. "For the first time in my adult life I panicked. I should have called an ambulance as soon as you said you were experiencing chest pains. It's what I would have told anyone else to do in the same situation. What I did, it was such a stupid thing to do. I took such a risk in calling Josh. It's all I've been able to think about these past few days."

"I for one am very glad that you did though." He said, smiling down at her. "Josh has been fantastic throughout all of this. I certainly couldn't have asked for a better doctor."

"It was a risk I should never have taken with your life." She shook her head.

"Life is full of risks Kate." Castle said. "What's logical isn't always what's right, and what's right isn't always easy. Everything worked out for the best though didn't it? So let's not dwell on the what if's shall we? It doesn't do to too much."

"I just love you so much." She said – wrapping her arms around him and clinging onto him as though she was never going to let him go again – and Castle hoped she never would. He knew that no other man could ever love her as much as he did. She was his – she was all he'd ever wanted. He hoped that no matter what happened from here on in that that would never change.

"I love you to." He smiled down at her. "Always!"

"Always…" She whispered.


	19. Chapter 19

**Chapter 19**

"Ok, just take it easy." Kate advised her pyjama clad fiancée as he made a bee-line for the couch – happy to finally be home. Martha followed, carrying the small holdall which had seen Castle through his two and a half week hospital stay, and Alexis closed the door behind them. Kate grabbed the blanket she had left ready for him on the back of the couch, and tucked it in around him as he lifted both his legs up onto the seat and leaned into the cushions behind him, whilst Alexis helped him to undo his laces and slip his shoes off.

Martha put the bag down by the door and made her way over to join them.

"Richard, don't you think you would be more comfortable in bed?" She asked her son.

"I've spent the past two weeks in bed mom." He told her, leaning back and smiling in a moment of pure bliss. He was still sore, and his chest hurt as the tort scar tissue readjusted to the contours of the couch, but he took in the familiar and comforting sights and smells of home and smiled. "I just want to spend a few hours with my family, unrestricted by visiting hours and uninterrupted by doctors." He said.

A banner had been erected above the breakfast counter which said 'Welcome Home' and he noticed the cake which had been placed underneath, mirroring the words above in whipped icing.

"Is that for me?" He asked.

Martha looked in the direction in which he was pointing – and smiled. Her son had always had a sweet tooth, growing up he'd always been spoiling his dinner with sugar, and this was a habit he had carried with him into adulthood – usually in the form of eating from a can of squeezey cream he kept in the fridge for the soul purpose of squirting directly into his mouth for that instant sugar rush. She nodded.

"It's candied chocolate fudge." She told him. "With caramel sauce."

She looked at her son eyeing the cake longingly. Sometimes it was still hard for her to accept the fact that he was all grown up now, and that she could no longer protect him as she had once been able to. He had his part to play, out in the big, wide world – but one thing the past two weeks had taught her was that bad things could happen anytime and anywhere, and danger didn't always come in the form of a knife, or a gun, the criminally inclined, or a psychopath. He would always be her little boy though, and she relished the glimmers she caught of the childlike wonder in his eyes.

"Hang on a minute," he asked her suspiciously, "you didn't bake it did you?"

"Richard Castle!" She exclaimed, "You survived eighteen years of home cooked meals prepared by my hand, and many more since then. I haven't poisoned you yet."

"Yes, but what you didn't realise mother was that on your nights to cook I was sneaking cheeseburgers on my way home from school." Castle smiled impishly. He readjusted his position, sliding further down the arm of the couch and leaning back into the plump cushions – and he grimaced, his hand automatically reaching for the side of his chest. Martha cupped her sons face in her hands.

"And if I'd known that I would have stopped your allowance." She said with a smile, their faces touching tenderly.

"Actually dad, it was my idea," Alexis smiled, kissing her father gently on this top of his head and wrapping her arms around his neck from behind as she rested her head on his warm shoulder, "and we've cleared it with Josh so we know that you're allowed to eat it, so long as you don't have too much."

He brushed the side of his daughter's face with one hand and leaned into her hug. His daughter gave the best hugs, he thought. All three were still all too aware of the bandages concealed beneath his pyjamas but Alexis didn't lean too heavily upon his shoulders.

"It's perfect sweetheart." He smiled contentedly. "It beats hospital food that's for sure."

Kate's smile mirrored her fiancé's. It was good to have him home, back amongst his family and where he belonged - and she could tell that he was happy to be home too.

That evening Castle fell asleep almost as soon as his head hit the pillows, but before she joined him there was one more thing Kate felt she had to do. Tucking herself in beside the man she loved she reached for her phone on the bedside table, and searched for her desired number in her contacts book. It was a number she hadn't had cause to use in a very long time – Josh Davidson.

She looked at his name for a second – their romance had been so fleeting – but maybe, she now thought, this had been their life's game plan all along. There had never been any doubt in Kate's mind that Josh was one of the best at what he did, and she had wanted the very best care for Castle. If she and Josh had never met – never loved – then there was no telling what might have happened to him.

Castle stirred in his sleep, and she reached around to stroke his cheek with a gentle finger. He still looked so small and childlike – vulnerable was the word she would have used to describe him – although maybe that was just the way the past couple of weeks had made him seem to her. There was now healthy colour within his cheeks though. His forehead was dry, and suitably cool – the fever gone.

Kate smiled.

The two word message she sent to Josh was short, but there wasn't much she could say to convey the full extent of her gratitude – 'Thank you' – and she didn't think it entirely inappropriate, given the circumstances, to sign it with a kiss, for old time's sake.

He got back to her almost immediately – the words 'you're welcome' the only indication she needed that any resentment there may have once been between the two of them was now gone.

She didn't know whether she and Josh would ever see each other again after this, or whether if they did they would ever reach such a stage in their relationship where they could be friends. A lot of choppy water had passed under the bridge which had once united them – she had treated him badly, she'd always known that. She may not have loved him in the way that he'd loved her, but he'd deserved better than to be cast aside in the manner he had been - as though surplus to requirement.

She looked over at Castle – she had treated him badly too – but if he had found it within his heart to forgive her then perhaps, given time, there was still hope for her and Josh too.

She smiled wistfully, putting her phone back down on the bedside table as she reached for the switch to turn off the lamp, before nesting down beside Castle – sliding herself closer to him until their bodies were touching beneath the sheets. She traced the outline of the dressings which were still swathed around his chest, and secured with medicated Elastoplast. He was in for a long and painful recovery – she knew better than anyone what lay ahead. It would be at least another few days before the dressings were removed, not to mention the fact that it would take weeks for his heart and lungs to fully recover – and even then he may never regain the full physicality he'd had before. It would take months before he'd be able to return to work at the prescient – and she knew how long and arduous the rehabilitation process could be.

But at least he was still alive.

She closed her eyes and allowed herself to be comforted by the sound of his breathing, and lulled by the gentle beating of his heart. After so many nights of falling asleep alone it was reassuring to feel the warmth of his body beside her again. She wrapped her arms around him, and nestled her head into the back of his neck, feeling as his own arms instinctively reached out to complete the embrace.

Her smile widened – even in sleep he was the same sweet, tender, and loving man she'd first fell in love with. Too true he could also be cocky, and arrogant, immature, and just a little too self-assured at times – but imperfections and all he was hers, and the thought of losing him terrified her.

She loved him, she really did, and she wanted to let the whole world know just how much. It no longer mattered to her that she'd started out their long association hating him – she wasn't quite sure whether it had been he or she who had changed, or both of them in their own separate ways, but hate had eventually turned into acceptance and acceptance had led them to friendship. It was from this friendship that love had taken route in her heart – but she'd stubbornly denied her feelings for so long that it was hard for her to pinpoint exactly when this had happened – and now that she had finally acknowledged them it was as though the universe was conspiring to tell her not to take him for granted.

She wouldn't – she resolved. She never would.

She closed her eyes. It was too hot to sleep entwined in his embrace and so she lay with her hand resting upon his chest – feeling the gentle rise and fall of his ribcage until she too finally fell asleep.


End file.
